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’t 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.
“It definitely gets tougher and tougher,” Force told RACER. “Last 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.
“We go into the Countdown, into the first race, and then went out first round. It’s really defeating.”
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.
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.
“I love the back-to-back races, especially in this crunch for the Countdown,” Force said. “I 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’t 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.”
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’s 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.
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
When asked what she’s learned about herself — how much this season has tested her — Force talked of the struggles in 2023 that have carried into ’24. She described ’23 as “one of my toughest seasons,” and now it’s going on two years without a victory.
“It really taught me a lot about this team that I’m with and how we’ve all been very patient,” she said. “We 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’ve never lost that faith or lost confidence that we aren’t going to do well.”
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’t have to worry about the requirement of being inside the top 10 in points to be championship-eligible.
Indianapolis was the “most stressful weekend ever,” having to earn her spot the hard way. The silver lining, she admitted, is that even though the team didn’t want to have to do it that way, it might have been a valuable experience.
“I think it was good for our team,” she said. “It was a pressure situation, and we came out on top.”
Now that she’s 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.
“100 percent,” she said of always having that championship thought process.
