John Force’s midlife crisis at 330 mph

[Schwartz Fan]

John Force’s midlife crisis at 330 mph
By JIM LITKE, AP Sports Columnist
13 hours, 45 minutes ago

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Return to Original Buzz Up PrintDriving a funny car at 330 mph might not be the best time for a mid-life crisis. It’s not like John Force has a choice.

For 30 years, winning was pretty much the only thing in his life. All of a sudden, he’s trying to make it just one of many.

“I can’t party like I used to, and some days I’m all over the racetrack,” Force said. “I used to love a good Budweiser, and I haven’t had a drink in a while. I used to be a cheeseburger, steak kind of guy, and last night I had a bowl of fruit and a bunch of cereal for dinner.

“But hey,” he added, “I’m still around.”

The godfather of drag racing turns 59 in a few weeks. When Force wakes up in the morning, his brain pleads “slow down,” and the entire left side of his body—from busted ankle to shattered wrist—still aches as the result of crash seven months ago in Dallas.


Then the other side of his brain reminds Force he can’t afford to, that he’s on the hook with sponsors, advertisers and his public for at least another four years. So it’s off to the gym—something else Force didn’t used to do—at 6 a.m.

Last March, a kid named Eric Medlen, whom he groomed from childhood to become a driver and considered a son, was killed testing one of Force’s race cars. Four months after that, the daughter he put in another race car to prepare her to take over the family empire, went spinning across the track in Seattle in flames. That was enough to shake any man’s confidence.

“I’m the one in the crash,” Ashley Force recalled Thursday, “but Dad is the one who winds up hyperventilating and being carried off in an ambulance. So that should tell you something right there.

“I think the message finally hit home: ‘You don’t have forever, nobody does. So you better appreciate what you’ve got.”’

You’d think that would be easy.

Force has won 14 funny car series championships, 10 in a row at one point, and built the most successful team drag racing has ever seen. When the NHRA Powerade series opens shop in Atlanta on April 27, Force will have a chance to pile up his 126th race and 1,000th round win.

He’s even laid down the plan for his succession.

Daughter Ashley, 25, was the rookie of the year in 2007 and is No. 1 in the series points race at the moment. Her 23-year-old sister Brittany qualified a car last weekend on the sport’s minor-league circuit in Vegas, and 21-year-old Courtney could soon follow suit.

The only things in Force’s universe that aren’t running according to schedule are his real-life series on the A&E network called Driving Force— “those wrecks kind of got in the way,” Force explained, “so we owe ‘em a few episodes”—and more important, his recovery from last September’s crash.

“I’m not the driver I used to be, I know that. I’m in the gym most every morning and plenty of nights, and if you ask me a number, I’m maybe 75 percent back,” Force said. “And believe me, I’ve already set enough records and done just about everything you could do in racing. All I’m trying to prove now is that I can drive again.”

Force hasn’t won a race since last August. He was 1-1 against Ashley and lined up to face her in the finals at Dallas last season when the quarterfinal round crash cut short their first potential battle with a championship at stake. But that was hardly Force’s biggest regret.

All the time he spent piling up those wins, Force believed the cars he climbed in were safe. Safe enough, anyway, that despite breaking too many bones to count, he put Medlen and his daughters in those cars, too. Until Medlen died as a result of head injuries, there hadn’t been a fatality in funny-car racing for almost 40 years. To say that haunts Force every day isn’t saying enough.

“I can’t tell you much work we’ve put into the safety side of things, especially the head gear,” he said. “We can’t not afford to do it. … And I won’t lie to you, I get up some mornings still feeling depressed. I know I’m wearing this body out. It’s not easy trying to find a balance between racing and living.”

Some days, when Force leaves the gym, his trainers and teammates kid him about “losing his gait.”

“I didn’t know what they were talking about until somebody said, ‘You’re losing your walk.’ What he meant was my strut.

“When I came up,” Force said, “Don Prudhomme was the king, so we all tried to walk like ‘The Snake.’ I guess I looked pretty pitiful. But like I said, I’m back in the driver’s seat, I still got my family around me and I still know when the Christmas tree lights up at the start line how to get that car down the road in a hurry.”

Whenever the next big win comes matters a little less to Force than it once did. Mostly because he’s learned to enjoy the small ones along the way. When Brittany qualified last weekend in Las Vegas, Force jumped on a scooter and rode to the finish line. He had to see her face for himself.

“She pulled her helmet off, and I saw that same big ol’ smile her mama has,” he said. “She’d been struggling with the car, and she says, ‘Dad, it still scares me.’ And I said, ‘It should.’

“All of a sudden, I wasn’t so afraid anymore. I felt like I’d taught her something, and maybe her sisters, too.”

It was a cool night in the desert, not unlike the night Force won his first race 30 years earlier. Instead of flying back home with the team, he borrowed a crew member’s car and drove back by himself.

“I needed to feel that—nighttime in the desert, big sky, music blasting— to remember what driving was like, just for the fun of it. That it ain’t always about the destination, that sometimes it’s about the journey, too. …

“Then halfway through the ride, I remembered something Brittany said. She asked me, ‘Do you think they’ll put it in the newspaper?’ I laughed when she said it, but you know what? That was a big part of it, too. Just making a run, going as fast as you can and reading the newspaper the next day to see if they mentioned your name.

“That’s the feeling I want back,” he said. “So don’t tell anybody to feel sorry for John Force. I didn’t put in all this work for nothing. I’m not going to accept coming back without at least another championship.”

John Force's midlife crisis at 330 mph - NASCAR - Yahoo! Sports

[wopher]

GOSH I LOVE THIS MAN, Thanks SF for posting that





Hey and I would love to eat fruit and a bowl of cereal with him for DINNER

[admin]

Originally Posted by Schwartz Fan I’m not going to accept coming back without at least another championship.”

I sure hope you get it too, that would be great!

[Dirt track racer]

John is one of a short list of drivers I would like to have dinner with and talk about racing.Still doing what he loves.
What a guy.!

[wopher]

Originally Posted by Dirt track racer John is one of a short list of drivers I would like to have dinner with and talk about racing.Still doing what he loves. What a guy.!

DTR why do you think I said "I would love to eat fruit and a bowl of cereal with him for DINNER" LOL