Photo Credit: Gary Nastase / Auto Imagery
DALLAS, Texas (Oct. 8, 2024) – Her chances of winning a third Top Fuel World Championship may be on life support but, entering this week’s 39th annual Texas Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex, Brittany Force and her HendrickCars.com Chevrolet dragster have become every other title contender’s worst nightmare.
Although her own path to the championship may be a bit convoluted, her potential for wreaking havoc on the title hopes of others is not.
The 38-year-old, a former Rookie-of-the-Year who raced to circuit stardom after securing world titles in 2017 and 2022, hasn’t won a tour event in almost two calendar years while crew chiefs David Grubnic and John Collins struggled with the nuances of a new engine and clutch combination.
However, recent performance suggests that the 16-time tour winner and her team are close to recapturing the form that delivered NHRA national records for time (3.623 seconds at Reading, Pa., in 2019) and speed (338.94 miles per hour at Pomona, Calif., in 2022) and made them the scourge of the category.
She has been the No. 1 qualifier at two of the last four races, has posted quick time at three of the last four stops and has had top speed three times in her last five starts. The issue has been consistency.
Nevertheless, Force is a driver that other contenders likely hope to avoid this weekend, especially in the early rounds. Her last time out, for example, she posted quick time of the event (3.702 seconds) in a first-round win at the Midwest Nationals at St. Louis only to bow out in round two after her car overpowered the track and lost traction.
The second woman to win a championship in the sport’s signature category, 40 years after Shirley Muldowney became the first, Force admits that she and her team are determined to return to the winners’ circle in at least one of the three remaining events.
“The Texas Motorplex is a racetrack our team is very familiar with,” she said. “We have previous wins here (her 2017 victory is one of 16 team wins over the last 31 years) and we know we’re close (to a breakthrough). With four qualifying runs, we plan to qualify Top 5 and earn (some) bonus points. We are sitting eighth and still have a good chance of continuing to move up.
“This event is a unique one on our circuit,” she said, “beginning with a fanfest on Thursday in downtown Waxahachie; then a chance for a team to win extra cash on Friday night ($15,000 to whomever posts the quickest time in Top Fuel and Funny Car). The fans always pack the Motorplex and I’m excited to get started.”
