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Nascar and Racing

Team Priorities Leave NHRA Competitors, John Force at Odds after U.S. Nationals

Posted Sep 07, 2009 8:41PM By Geoffrey Miller (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Other Racing Series

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Let's get one thing straight: John Force may or may not have thrown his semifinal match in Monday's U.S. Nationals -- but we have no firm evidence saying he did.

We do know, however, that the NHRA team owner, driver and 14-time champion picked the undesirable lane, was nearly three times slower on his reaction time and made a remarkably un-John Force move off the starting line en route to smoking his tires and watching as teammate Robert Hight scooted past and earned a spot in the Countdown to the Championship.

And we do know that the NHRA -- thanks to some harsh words, a scuffle and even more verbal barbs -- is looking at a pretty serious issue of team cooperation, even at the series' biggest event.



Monday's brouhaha began in Indianapolis' O'Reilly Raceway Park at the 55th U.S. Nationals when results of the second round in the funny car division ended with Cruz Pedregon losing his race with John Force and Force's teammate Robert Hight beat Bob Tasca to advance. The wins paired Force -- previously locked into the Countdown -- with Hight, who needed just one more round win to earn enough points to secure his spot as the fourth John Force Racing team qualified for the championship battle.

A Hight round win would also knock Cruz Pedregon from the Countdown.

Naturally, the questions started quickly when the pairing was realized.

What was John Force going to do? Would he race Hight straight up, knowing that beating his teammate would keep Hight out of the NHRA championship hunt in the last six races? Would the prestige of the U.S. Nationals as the drag world's largest event be bigger than Force's desire to make sure each of his team's -- and more narrowly, their sponsors -- were happy?

And naturally, the Pedregon camp -- one that also included Funny Car point leader and Cruz's brother Tony -- wasn't thrilled with the all-JFR matchup in the semifinal round, but held the accusations back until the Force/Hight race was run.

The result didn't make the Pedregons feel any better.

Hight left the line against Force with a very conservative reaction time of 0.142 seconds, while Force left almost inexcusably late. In the previous two runs Monday, Force had reaction times for the green light of 0.68 seconds and 0.94 seconds.

By the time Force left the line against Hight, he was nearly three times slower than the average of his previous reaction times with a reading of 0.209 seconds. In fact, at the last race, Force had permissible reaction times of .049 and .097 seconds -- quite the difference from a 0.209.

The red flags didn't stop there on Force's semifinal run.

Nearly immediately, the green, white and red Castrol car swapped to the right and out of the groove and smoked the tires before Force regained control and briefly returned to throttle at half track. Hight's steady but not quick run of 279.09 mph and 4.261 seconds easily swiped past his team owner, locking him in the Countdown.

In the end, it was almost too predictable that Force's car would do that -- especially for Cruz Pedregon as he watched from just behind the staging lane.

"Well, there wasn't a whole person in the garage area who thought that wasn't going to happen," said Cruz Pedregon. "Force cheats. He manipulates the outcome of these races and he should be ashamed of himself."

Before those words made it to the far end of the track where Force and Hight were, another JFR car driven by Ashley Force Hood -- the eventual race winner -- blew down the track in the next pass to beat Cruz's brother and funny car point leader Tony Pedregon by .0472 seconds.

For Ashley, it was a huge win, particularly since her father gave Tony his first big break to drive a Funny Car well over a decade ago.

When Tony -- who before Cruz's words was the more outspoken of the two brothers concerning the incident -- emerged from his car at the top end of the track, the scene got quite interesting. A few words suddenly led to an absolutely irate Force as he began yelling obscenities, pointing and attempting to confront Pedregon while being restrained by NHRA officials and team members. Pedregon also shouted back.

"What bothers me is that people that talk behind your back, people that go on the internet, people that go on TV and say stuff," said Force. "And then they walk by you and mutter something to you and you go 'What? What did you say? Say it to me."

"Have a little spine."

With Hight and Force Hood advanced to the final round, and Cruz Pedregon bumped from the Countdown that he won a year ago, the talk and issue then turned to what effect, if any, NHRA can over preventing teams like JFR from purposely plotting a race -- and, even, if its an issue that drag racing should care about.

Perhaps a change could be made to the way points are distributed when teams run against their teammates on-track to keep them from being affected but not allowing them to count until a win is secured in the next round. Presumably, there's lot of possibilities from the rules perspective -- the NHRA does have a rule against team cooperation while racing and couldn't find conclusive evidence that Force rigged Monday's race -- and those might be the way to go.

To me, the issue would have been wiped off the map easily by having Cruz Pedregon perform up to par through the first 18 events of 2009. The team had exactly the same amount of time to score more points than Hight, and even controlled their own destiny on Monday had they beaten Force in the second round and moved to face Hight in the third.

Unfortunately, NHRA drag racing isn't at all like NASCAR in the sense of the stock car drivers often pulling the practice of allowing a teammate to lead a lap or two in a race for bonus points. In the NHRA, the only way to earn more points is to advance, meaning Force couldn't really win for racing against his teammate.

If Force beats Hight, he likely wins the U.S. Nationals but leaves a quarter of his team out of the championship chase. Can you really the blame the guy if he really did throw the race?

After all, he's got bills to pay at a mighty big race shop just down the street from Monday's racing.

Of course, Force denied such a fix was in.

But if you're a John Force fan, you're probably feeling the sickest after Monday's racing knowing that their was a distinct possibility that Force handed Hight a round at the biggest drag race in the world, despite Force having one his best chances to find victory lane for the first time in over a year.

There's something that just doesn't go over easily when the guy you cheer for just pulls over -- even if it was Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barichello at Indianapolis in the F1 race a few years back.

This is certainly a problem for the NHRA, but its one that just can't be fixed easily -- a feeling that Force surely felt when he stopped for maybe a half of a second on Monday to consider what move would be the best for his race team.

Perhaps that should indicate that the end of Force's racing career is nearing thanks to the fact that he can't decide what is more important -- a big win for himself or a big win for his own team. Most of the time, racers don't have to think too hard about that decision.

Thanks to the prodigy team that is JFR, the NHRA certainly has a problem on its hands, but the solution is hardly clear. Do you fine, scrutinize and penalize teams for seemingly any act of cooperation? What's the best way to police it?

As we saw today at Indy, those are questions without answers. For the NHRA, that's got to be a little worrisome.

Tags: John+Force, NHRA

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