SEATTLE — With teams mapping out scenarios and calculating points as the inaugural Countdown to the Championship cutoff nears, National Hot Rod Ass’n drivers were forced to look ahead following Sunday’s Fram Autolite Nationals at Infineon Raceway.
But the three winners — John Force (Funny Car), Tony Schumacher (Top Fuel) and Greg Anderson (Pro Stock) — couldn’t help looking backward.
For Force and Schumacher, their $40,000 victories were memorials for loved ones lost, tributes to two fallen drivers still present in spirit. Both were driving with more than a mission to clinch one of their class’s eight berths for the new championship format that will be set two races from now. Both had resolved to win this race to honor memories.
Force, pitied earlier this season as a 14-time champion who was floundering in 20th place, was talking like a champion again after eliminating daughter Ashley Force in the opening round and dropping her from 10th to 12th in the standings. He moved into seventh place.
“You hate to beat your own child at the game you’re trying to teach her. But she has to earn the right,” he said. Alluding to his next two opponents, Cruz Pedregon and Tommy Johnson, Jr., he said, “They want to make The Countdown, too, but they have to earn it, too. They have to beat me.”
But more important, Force won this race at Sonoma, Calif., for his late teammate and protégé, Eric Medlen.
When the tour visited Seattle the previous week, the Force Racing team had a flood of Medlen memories, for that was the first time since his death following a crash in testing in March that they had visited a venue where Medlen had won. But this was different. Medlen won this race at Sonoma in 2006. It was the first of two victories for him last season. The track is close to Medlen’s home in Oakdale, Calif.
And minutes after the race, no matter what the outcome, Force knew he would watch the jam-packed stands empty and flock to the Eric Medlen Ice Cream Social, the track’s tribute to the popular Funny Car cowboy who contended that a person never can be unhappy when he’s eating ice cream.
He said he and his team prayed before the race and they decided one of the Team Castrol/Auto Club drivers would “come out of here with a win for Eric.” Said Force, “I remember the crazy kid, eating ice cream, runnin’ around, screamin’ and yellin’, so happy to be here.”
Crew chief Austin Coil told the flagging Force before the final round, “This isn’t the time to be getting tired. Suck it up and win this race for the kid who gave his life for this team and these fans.”
Force always obeys Coil, so he did. Then he said the trophy was for Medlen’s dad, John, mother Mimi, and “the whole town of Oakdale.” He said he wanted “to give them a moment to feel good about Eric.”
Schumacher finally won on the sparkling Sonoma quarter mile for the first time in three final-round attempts. But the U.S. Army dragster driver wanted the victory more for crew chief Alan Johnson. This track was where Johnson and his late brother, Blaine, from nearby Santa Maria, Calif., celebrated their final victory together July 28, 1996. It was Blaine Johnson’s third victory that season. He was killed 34 days later at Indianapolis.  
In Pro Stock, Greg Anderson’s 50th-career victory signaled his renewed confidence and his ability to finish what he starts. Anderson’s milestone discarded the milestone that had burdened him on this stretch of six races in consecutive weekends. He and his Summit Pontiac GTO had come into the race with two victories in his previous three visits here, but he said he hardly felt like the point leader, let alone a worldbeater.
“I needed a get-well race,” he said after beating teammate Jason Line in the final.