John Force Racing Fields Four Cars For First Time Since Medlen’s Death

LAS VEGAS — Ashley Force drove her Castrol GTX Ford Mustang into the record books by becoming the first female Funny Car driver to reach a final round.
That all but cemented her status as the 2007 winner of the Auto Club of Southern California Road to the Future Award that identifies the NHRA Rookie of the Year. Force reached the milestone in just the 20th start of her career.
“I know a lot of people talk about me being a gal and reaching these milestones, but I would not have made it to the final round without the eight guys on my crew and the hard work of (co-crew chiefs) Dean Antonelli and Ron Douglas,” she said. “We want to win races for our sponsors and our teams. Today was tough because Robert (Hight, brother-in-law and Countdown to One contender), got knocked out early. But we all pulled together behind our Castrol GTX Ford Mustang.”
Ashley’s performance salvaged an otherwise grim day for John Force Racing’s championship hopes as Team Castrol driver Hight joined Ron Capps and Gary Scelzi on the losing side of first round match-ups, while points leader and former JFR team member Tony Pedregon cruised to an almost insurmountable point lead as the race winner.
“It’s real tough. We got ourselves in this position. We are not ever going to give up until it is absolutely over,” said an obviously disappointed Hight, “We’ll go to Pomona and see what kind of conditions we have. We are going to test here tomorrow. We’ll just do the best we can. We are off a little right now and that is what put us in this position.”
At the end of the day, Castrol team owner John Force was philosophical yet full of optimism when he addressed his four teams. Hight is 99 points behind Pedregon and his first championship.
“We need a miracle, but I love the Hail Mary,” said Force, the former high school football stand-out who is on the sidelines because of injuries suffered in a Sept. 23rd crash at the Texas Motorplex at Ennis, south of Dallas.
Filling in for the 14-time champion, Phil Burkart, Jr. performed admirable in his first start in the Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford by taking out Capps in the first round. His day ended in a second round loss to Tony Pedregon’s brother, Cruz.
“We dropped a cylinder early, it shook and I started to pedal it (but) I just didn’t catch it fast enough. I was trying to get it back under control. I went to grab for the brake and the car was moving around pretty good. I couldn’t get the brake to help me,” Burkart said.
“It was a career weekend no matter what,” Burkart said. “It was instrumental in the first round, if nothing else, to take out Ron Capps. That part alone was huge. That is the type of round win I came here for. I’m just happy John (Force) put the faith in me and (co-crew chiefs) Austin (Coil) and Bernie (Fedderly) that I was that kind of driver who could come in and go rounds.”
Team Castrol 2008 rookie-to-be Mike Neff qualified his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang well, but fell to Jeff Arend in the first round in his first NHRA national event. Even though the first elimination round of his career included a spectacular engine explosion, Neff had a handle on how the round got away from him.
“It looks like I let it get to the inside and it started spinning just a little and then it went boom. The first problem was me getting it get a little inside out of the groove and it started spinning the tires,” Neff. “I think we had a great weekend. John (Medlen) is doing a great job with the car. I was doing an OK job until today of getting it down the track. All in all, I think we are way ahead of the game from where we would have ever expected coming into this.”

• Just after Melanie Troxel announced that she will leave the Top Fuel class to drive a Funny Car as teammate to Mike Ashley, her Vietnam Veterans/POW MIA Dragster is showing impressively.
“We’ve got a great operation right now,” Troxel said. “This car is incredibly consistent; although it wasn’t our best weekend. As a driver, I was just pretty mediocre at times this weekend. The car is great and you’re going to have that happen sometimes. You’re going to have days when the car doesn’t run well and some days when the driver doesn’t do her best, but we still have a very consistent car. It certainly wasn’t a bad outing at all this weekend.
“I cannot remember when this car did not go down the track or when you didn’t need to pedal it or do anything to it. It consistently goes down the track and its fast at the same time,” Troxel said. “I can’t say enough about the efforts of the team, especially John Stewart and Lance Larsen. They are the ones that are really responsible for the performance of the car.
“I can’t say enough about what they’ve done over the past few months in really turning this program around. We’ve been turning in some great miles-per-hour lately. It’s definitely impressive,” she said. “The car runs great on the top end and we’re learning a lot as we go. I think we can continually get better and better.”