FORCE FINALLY GETS 100TH

By Dave Densmore

Crew chief Austin Coil readies John Force for his historic run. (photo by Jeff Burk)

John Force overcame heat, humidity and a determined Tommy Johnson Jr. April 14 to win his milestone 100th NHRA event on his fourth opportunity to do so.

"I'm just glad to get it over with," said the 52-year-old icon after he turned back Johnson's challenge in the final round of the 15th annual O'Reilly Springnationals at Houston Raceway Park. "Now, we can focus on our real job - winning the NHRA POWERade championship for Castrol, Ford and the rest of our sponsors."

Force, who always has run well at HRP and remains the track record holder at 4.788 seconds, 321.88 miles per hour, faced strong challenges in all four rounds. Although he started only fourth in the field, behind teammates Tony Pedregon and Gary Densham and arch rival Whit Bazemore, Force posted the quickest time in each round of eliminations.

After disposing of Dale Creasy in round one, he stopped Del Worsham and Whit Bazemore to reach the final round for the third time in five 2002 events and for the 156th time in his career. The win was Force's second of the season and the fourth for his team. Pedregon, driver of the Castrol SYNTEC Ford, won at Gainesville, Fla., and Gary Densham, the former auto shop teacher, prevailed just last week at Las Vegas.

For Force, the victory was his sixth in Houston's spring race and his seventh overall at the sea level facility. Pedregon has three career wins ate HRP, more than he has at any other track on the tour.

The unlikely drive to 100 wins began innocently enough on June 28, 1987. Who could have imagined that a victory in the Molson Grandnational (Sanair Dragstrip, Montreal), the only NHRA national event contested outside the continental United States, would be the first step toward drag racing immortality.

That win, which came in his 66th career start, was as big a surprise to Force as to anyone else. After all, he had been to the finals nine times previously and on each occasion had come up short. Nine final rounds, nine runner-up finishes before he beat Ed "the Ace" McCulloch at Sanair.

He wouldn't win his first race on U.S. soil until a year later when he beat Bruce Larson (who would go on to win the 1989 Winston Championship) in the final round of what was then the NHRA Springnationals at Columbus, Ohio (June 19, 1988). It was the first of three 1988 wins including his only career final round triumph against Kenny Bernstein, the man to whom he lost the first time he reached an NHRA final round (the 1979 Cajun Nationals at Baton Rouge, La.) and to whom he lost five more times before winning at the 1988 World Finals at Pomona, Calif.

Win No. 10 came during his first Winston Championship season when he beat Larson at the 1990 Fram/Autolite Nationals at Sonoma, Calif.

No 25 came on April 25th, 1993 at Atlanta Dragway, where he victimized Chuck Etchells. Six years later, the same track surrendered victory No. 75, significant not because it came at the expense of arch rival Whit Bazemore, but because it represented Force's smallest margin of victory (.001 of a second) in all his 100 wins.