‘The Battle, the Camaraderie, Being with People, Cheer of the Crowd—All That S---’

• John Force’s Camaro took him on a wild ride at the Winternationals as he crossed into the opposite lane and collected competitor J.R. Todd.

• The accident, which totaled both cars, triggered whispers that the veteran with a record 155 victories should retire.

• Force indicated he isn’t going anywhere.

NHRA Funny Car icon John Force, who’s closing in on his 74th birthday May 4, knows people might not understand the depth of his passion.

“You ask anybody, ‘Why would you be 70 years old and driving a race car? Why?’ Because I love to drive them,” he said. “I’m trying to help the sport. I’m trying to keep cars out there. I don’t do it for the money. I made enough money, I can retire. I do it because I love the driving. I love the battle. I love the camaraderie. I love being with the people and the cheer of the crowd, all that s---, you know what I’m saying?”

But some voiced concern after Force’s PEAK Chevy Camaro darted across the track during qualifying at the Lucas Oil Winternationals two weeks ago and collided with competitor J.R. Todd’s Toyota Supra, destroying both race cars. Neither driver was injured.

Force said before the start of this weekend’s NHRA Four-Wide nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that he and his team still are unsure what caused his car to cross the center line (something it did in the following pass, as well). But he said with certainty that although his driving strategy did play a part in the crash, age wasn’t a factor and indicated he has no plans to retire now. Moreover, he denied a rumor that a handful of drivers suggested to him that he quit driving.

“We’re going to address my car. My crew chiefs have addressed me. Robert (Hight) has addressed me, like, ‘You push it too far.’ I’ve done it before, trying to get qualified and doing stuff, but this wasn’t a good time to push it, because it got me,” Force said.

He said the wreck was “a combination of things. I oversteered it myself—my fault. Maybe the track was really narrow, and I learned a good lesson on that. I’m going to go out and make some runs and see where I’m at with the car. Nothing’s wrong with me. No different, other than I’m just getting older. But bottom line, after I make some runs, then I can probably give you some answers. Maybe we’ll know what went wrong. And I’m not arguing—I was part of it.”

As for a posse of his peers leaning on him to retire, Force said, “No, it didn’t happen—not even one. If there was somebody who said they came to me, well, tell me who they are, because they didn’t. If anything, people were probably staying away from me out of respect. I’m sure there’s people that don’t want to see me hurt, because at my age, if you get hurt, it’d be different than a 30-year-old that gets hurt in a car. But no, I’d tell you if somebody came to me. J.R., he didn’t like it. But nobody asked me to retire. I’d tell you if they did.”

Force said he didn’t have any injuries from the wreck, even though he absorbed a wicked diagonal smash into the guard wall. “I got right out of my car, and the doc had come over the wall, but I wanted to see J.R. Todd, to make sure he was OK. And when J.R. said he was OK, then they went back and put me through the basic s---. They checked me and turned me loose. They take the car, and that’s what they do. But they also look at you and give you the test and see if you can move and walk and do all that stuff. And I was OK with all that,” he said.

Force said he has been in this position before.

“Five years ago, I got over the center line, and people were after me then, because nobody likes to see that. Then they turn around and do it the next day, and then they’re saying, ‘Oh, gee, well, I did it, too.” Well, who knows why? I don’t blame nobody. We just go down the road,” he said. “Is my age a factor? I don’t believe so.

“I like to drive on the edge, and maybe I push it too far sometimes. And I’m evaluating that, especially on a tricky racetrack. You got a narrow groove, and you’re building a lot of horsepower. Not like the old days. You can’t get away with things you used to get away with. And this is what’s really going on in my head, and I don’t want to put any blame on anything, because we haven’t had a chance to evaluate the car. We loaded it in the trailer and brought out another car the next day.”

He said Todd “is a good guy” who is “just a real racer and he understands it. I understand it. We don’t like it, but we got to move ahead. It’s part of the game. How do you get around it? But nobody likes that, especially me,” Force said. “I’ve been hit before, and I’ve lost cars, and I don’t like it... But we’re going to do to our car what we need to do to help the driver.”

His team built a new front end for the car during the offseason, and it resulted in steering that he said is “too good.” That might cause occasional problems, he said, because “I attack. I’m jacked up when I race and oversteering it.” So that Saturday at Pomona, he said, “you could crank the wheel and it would turn, but it had a lot of drag. So they’re addressing that.”

The crew has bolstered the shocks “to slow the steering down. It helps the driver, but you don’t want to go too far that way or you can’t steer it, either. So we are addressing the problem,” he said.

The NHRA impounded Force’s car for a short period, and Force said, “We couldn’t even get the data on the run. They had all our computers. They had everything. And we got it back the next day, I think. But we were in the middle of a race, and we just went from there. We will definitely fix it.”

He said he’s ready to keep on battling for a 17th championship: “It’s what I do.”

Force is reconciled to the fact that fans and other observers have formed their own opinions about his future: “There’s two sides to everything. And I don’t follow the Internet, but I’ve heard a lot of people are upset on the Internet. Some are for me; some are against me. That’s the way the world is.”

Years ago, on a whim, John Force ripped off a piece of notebook paper and scribbled something on it. The message he wrote was: “To the world: You can’t handle the truth.” And the truth is, that’s the way John Force is.