It’s been a difficult season for Brittany Force and her John Force Racing Top Fuel dragster team.
From on-track performance, including a DNQ at Route 66 Raceway in Joliet, Ill., to her father John Force suffering a head injury in a crash last month, Brittany Force has been through the wringer this year.
After missing the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals in Norwalk, Ohio, to be with family following her dad’s June 23 accident at Virginia Motorsports Park, Force returned to the cockpit at Washington’s Pacific Raceways on July 21.
A first-round exit to Tony Schumacher certainly wasn’t what she and the team hoped for in Seattle, but it was a building block for the July 28 race at California’s Sonoma Raceway.
Aboard her familiar matte-black Monster Energy Top Fuel dragster, Force rocketed to third quickest in qualifying. On elimination day, Force earned the top speed of the weekend at 336.49 mph during a first-round defeat of Josh Hart.
“Overall, this was a really good weekend for this Monster Energy / Flav-R-Pac / Cornwell Tools / HendrickCars.com / PEAK Chevy team. We made quite a bit of progress,” Force said.
“Our goal was to qualify in the top five. We qualified third. We were pretty consistent during qualifying. Race day, first round, we laid down a .68, which was an outstanding run for this team. Then we came out second round, ran a .74. The track was heating up. We slowed it down a little, but another solid, clean run.”
Force knocked out Billy Torrence in round two to reach the semifinals where her run for a Wally fell short to Antron Brown, who went on to win the event over NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart in the finals.
“It’s a tough team over there, tough competitor,” Force said. “We gave it our all, but with the track heating up, we drove into smoke. I let the car settle and tried to pedal it. I could see him too far out ahead of us, so we just let that one go.
“We will pack up, and actually we will head to Norwalk [for Night Under Fire match race] next, where we can keep continuing figuring this car out and getting her ready for closing in on this countdown.”
Despite coming up short on Sunday, reaching the semifinals aided her bid for a Countdown appearance with only two races left in the regular season.
She holds the 10th and final Countdown to the Championship spot, 78 markers ahead of Hart.