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It may be an up-and-down season, but Force went on a roll over the first two days in Charlotte, going No. 1 Friday and holding it through Saturday for her third top qualifier of the year. NHRA photo<\/p>\nBrittany Force, two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion, is facing another potential winless season. It’s a harsh situation for a driver and team accustomed to success and a win column that doesn\u2019t consist of goose eggs. After she won five races in 2022 en route to winning the title, she and her John Force Racing team have been at battle ever since to regain the same form.<\/p>\n
“It definitely gets tougher and tougher,\u201d Force told RACER. \u201cLast weekend, we got beat first round (at Maple Grove). I was so upset. We came out of a strong weekend in Indy where we qualified well, went to the semifinals, and I felt like we finally had this momentum moving forward into right when it matters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go into the Countdown, into the first race, and then went out first round. It\u2019s really defeating.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team to rallied around each other. Force revealed they gathered at the end of the weekend at Maple Grove to spread motivation and reminders about staying focused and pumped up for the next race.<\/p>\n
NHRA’s Carolina Nationals at zMAX Dragway is the second of six races in the Countdown to the Championship playoffs, coming just a week after the first, and it’s a welcome sight for Force.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the back-to-back races, especially in this crunch for the Countdown,\u201d Force said. \u201cI wish we would do three, have a weekend off and do the last three. That would be how I like to do it because I don\u2019t like going home and sitting and thinking about whether you had a great weekend and moving forward or having a bad weekend that you want to come back from. I like back-to-back races because you get right back into it, and your mindset is still right in that same zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Force hasn’t made a final-round appearance this season, her win\/loss record sitting at 11-13, but she’s made four semifinal appearances with three No. 1 qualifying awards. It\u2019s been a season of good and then bad. She failed to qualify for the event in Chicago and then sat out the event in Norwalk following the season-ending crash in Virginia that hospitalized her father, John Force.<\/p>\n
It may be an up-and-down season, but Force went on a roll over the first two days in Charlotte, going No. 1 Friday and holding it through Saturday for her third top qualifier of the year. NHRA photo<\/p>\n
When asked what she\u2019s learned about herself — how much this season has tested her — Force talked of the struggles in 2023 that have carried into ’24. She described \u201923 as \u201cone of my toughest seasons,\u201d and now it\u2019s going on two years without a victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really taught me a lot about this team that I\u2019m with and how we\u2019ve all been very patient,\u201d she said. \u201cWe still push forward and stay motivated when it almost feels impossible to stay motivated. Somehow, we find a way. We come out every weekend and we believe that we will win the event, qualify top five, and go rounds. We\u2019ve never lost that faith or lost confidence that we aren\u2019t going to do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
A back-against-the-wall type season resulted in Force not clinching her Countdown spot until the second round of eliminations at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, the final race of the regular season. She had a strong race day, as needed, and was helped by Josh Hart’s early exit. In previous years, Force attended every race and didn\u2019t have to worry about the requirement of being inside the top 10 in points to be championship-eligible.<\/p>\n
Indianapolis was the \u201cmost stressful weekend ever,” having to earn her spot the hard way. The silver lining, she admitted, is that even though the team didn\u2019t want to have to do it that way, it might have been a valuable experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was good for our team,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a pressure situation, and we came out on top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that she\u2019s in the Countdown, Force and her JFR team aren’t losing the mindset of being capable of winning the championship, even though she’s sitting in ninth position, 133 points behind, going into Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201c100 percent,\u201d she said of always having that championship thought process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brittany Force, two-time NHRA Top Fuel champion, is facing another potential winless season. It’s a harsh situation for a driver and team accustomed to success and a win column that doesn\u2019t consist of goose eggs. After she won five races in 2022 en route to winning the title, she and her John Force Racing team …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-racing","has-thumb","has-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.timesamerica.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}