SONOMA, Calif. — John Force reluctantly confirmed Saturday that Mike Neff, crew chief for 2005 class champion Gary Scelzi, will drive a fourth Ford Mustang for his organization next season and that John Medlen will be his crew chief.
Force said John Medlen made the final decision, telling him that he “had given Eric a chance and ... should do the same for another kid with a dream.”
The ride had been in limbo since Eric Medlen’s fatal crash during a test session in March at Gainesville, Fla. But Force mentioned in his post-victory interviews at Bristol in early July that he and the team had decided to bring out a fourth car again to join him, daughter Ashley and Robert Hight (who, like Medlen and Neff, always had worked on the cars and expressed a desire to drive).
Force said, “We didn’t plan to say anything, because (Neff) and Scelzi are still racing for a title. But Don Schumacher (who owns the Neff-tuned Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger) kind of announced it to the world. Our game plan was to wait until after the season so there wouldn’t be any distractions.”
He said Neff told him after Eric Medlen’s accident that he might be interested in sliding behind the wheel “if we were going to keep developing Next Generation drivers like Eric and Robert.”
Neff also worked with current Force Racing crew chief Bernie Fedderly at Larry Minor Racing. Then he worked on the car in which Cruz Pedregon beat Force for the 1992 championship. He became Scelzi’s crew chief in 2003.

n Doug Herbert was the beneficiary of a second-straight Friday night qualifying session gone awry. The cooler track temperatures make it the optimum of the four chances to run quick elapsed times, but rain washed out the session at Seattle the weekend before, and Alan Bradshaw’s engine explosion and subsequent lengthy cleanup against a curfew spoiled it this time. Only eight of 18 made it down the track before Bradshaw’s blowup and NHRA’s announcement to the few faithful fans at that hour that it wasn’t going to hurry the cleanup process.
Herbert, who swiped the No. 1 spot with a 4.556-second pass at 315.15 miles per hour in his Snap-on Tools dragster, held on Saturday for his first such honor in nearly two years. He had the advantage over 10 of his fellow Top Fuel racers, who didn’t get to run Friday night before the 10 p.m. cutoff. “We obviously got a lucky break, but luck is like a bank,” he said, “and it seems like we’ve made a lot of deposits this year. So we’ll take it.”
Matco Tools dragster driver Whit Bazemore, one of those who had to scrap his Friday night chance, didn’t take it and like it.
“We are disappointed on many levels,” Bazemore said. “We’re disappointed because of what was allowed to happen. The sanctioning body is there to maintain a level playing field. If there’s a strict curfew, it seems odd to start the session 28 minutes late. It’s just not fair. It’s not fair to the fans.
“We’re out here competing for championship points and bonus points, and the fans are the real losers. We’re out here trying to take this sport to the next level, and that won’t happen if we continue down this path. You can’t alienate fans and sponsors like we did tonight.”
Relying on his one run of 4.582 seconds at 323.43 mph with no opportunity to improve, he fell from second to fifth in order. That wasn’t a bad start, but he lost to Hillary Will in the opening round.

n Gary Scelzi took his place Sunday on Infineon Raceway’s Wall of Fame alongside fellow drag racers Warren Johnson (2005) and John Force (2006), Speedway Motorsports, Inc. chairman and track owner O. Bruton Smith and NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon, Ricky Rudd, Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin.
The Fresno, Calif., native and Mopar/Oakley Dodge Charger Funny Car driver was feted in pre-race ceremonies. But he didn’t feel all that special when he lost traction at about 400 feet in his first-round matchup against Gary Densham. He said that 5.765-second run at 205.72 mph “kind of shocked Mike (crew chief Neff) and me both. I don’t know what we could’ve done different. We weren’t exactly tip-toeing, but we were definitely in the safe range. Nothing’s wrong. We must have just misread the track a little bit. It was close, but it didn’t quite cut it.”

n He has long been known as “Fast Jack.” Then after winning at Denver and Seattle, Jack Beckman became “Back-to-Back” Jack. But the Funny Car driver lost in the opening round to a desperate to make The Countdown Cruz Pedregon and failed to sweep the Western Swing.
Beckman would’ve been only the second Funny Car driver to accomplish the feat (John Force did it in 1994) and just the sixth in all classes (following Joe Amato, Cory McClenathan and Larry Dixon in Top Fuel and Greg Anderson in Pro Stock, too). But he was philosophical after exiting with fifth place. “Three weeks ago, if somebody said we would win two out of the three Western Swing races, we would have taken that, but losing stinks,” Beckman said. “I think we’re in wonderful shape. We didn’t take any hit in the points. We’re still two rounds out of third. Hopefully, we can close that up at the next race.”