HE AIN’T BEAUTIFUL, BUT HE’S STILL BOLD
SONOMA, CA – John Force doesn’t really understand all the fuss over daughter Courtney’s photo spread in ESPN The Magazine’s latest 
“Body Issue.” After all, the 25-year-old wasn’t the first Force family member to pose sans seven layer Simpson firesuit.
Force himself did so in 2011, posing in the altogether for a sidebar entitled “The Body You Don’t Want” that focused on the numerous injuries suffered by the 15-time NHRA champion in a horrific 2007 crash at an NHRA event in Texas that led to the first complete re-design of the Funny Car chassis in 25 years.
Fortunately for the elder Force, the championship at this week’s 26th annual Sonoma Nationals won’t be decided by either the application of the universal body fat index, which would certainly favor Courtney and others, nor by an arbitrary “hotness” factor which, again, would leave him lacking.
Instead, it’ll be decided by who is best able to negotiate the 1,000 foot concrete-and-asphalt course at Sonoma Raceway, a track on which nobody has won more often than has the 64-year-old with the battered physique.
Force has won seven times at Sonoma. This week, though, he’ll try to do it for the first time with Jimmy Prock as crew chief on the Castrol GTX Ford Mustang.
Last week, Force took his firesuit, helmet and an array of Castrol GTX decals and other identifiers and moved one pit spot over in the John Force Racing compound. Teammate Robert Hight did the same in a straight-up driver swap designed to “shake things up” within the most successful Funny Car team in history.
“I enjoy working with Jimmy,” Force said of the new alignment. “We come from the same school. I used to see him with his dad (Tom) and the Detroit Tiger (Funny Car). Now I’m driving the Prock Rocket,” a car that, when it wore the Auto Club colors, won at Sonoma Raceway in 2008 with Hight at the controls.
“I think I’m putting the right people together,” Force said. “Prock and (Mike) Neff have different crew chief styles and I’m fine with that. Bottom line is they’re both world championship crew chiefs.”
On his turn in the “Body Issue,” Force admitted that he was a little embarrassed by it all.
“They didn’t want me because I was a hulk,” he said, “but because I was broken up. They wanted to show how I had recovered. I was never pretty. I don’t have a body like (Tony) Schumacher or (Matt) Hagan or Antron (Brown).
“I was in the gym the other morning,” he said, momentarily wandering away from the topic, “and Hagan was in there running and doing push-ups so hard that I didn’t even have to work out. It made me tired just watching him.
“So I took my hits (for the magazine spread),” acknowledged the 135-time NHRA tour winner, “ but I did it for the same reasons as Courtney, because I felt it could give more exposure to my sponsors and the sport.”
As for his youngest daughter’s “cover girl” status, Force is typically supportive.
“She turned it down the first year because she didn’t feel like she had the credentials,” said the 2008 inductee into the Motor Sports Hall of Fame of America. “Well, now she’s shown she can drive one of these hot rods. She was Rookie of the Year (as the 2012 winner of the Auto Club’s Road to the Future Award), she won the Winternationals (earlier this year) and she’s in the hunt for the Mello Yello championship.
“She’s got a great athlete’s physique, just like the San Francisco quarterback (Colin Kaepernick) and every other athlete in the book. Plus, ESPN really does it right. But, at the end of the day, it was her decision and I always support my kids once they’ve decided to do something.
“I think she’s just ready to get back to racing and so am I.”
