Top Fuel star Brittany Force to test JFR Chevy Camaro Funny Car
Legendary Funny Car driver and team owner John Force has revealed that he is having a Chevrolet Camaro Funny Car built for daughter Brittany, currently a star in Top Fuel.
Brittany Force, who last year became the first ever Top Fuel driver in John Force Racing, chalked up three wins, and has added another this season.
However, father and team-owner John Force says he is having a Camaro Funny Car built especially for her. As the smallest and lightest member of the team, necessitating special engineering of the car by JFR’s fabrication shop.
She will drive the Chevy later this season and is scheduled for a seat fitting prior to next week’s Fallen Patriots Route 66 NHRA Nationals in Joliet, Ill.
“I never had a car that fit Brittany,” Force said. “Because she’s so light, we had to move a lot of weight (around the car) and had to move the steering closer to her.
“We’re making a bunch of changes to make it fit her perfectly. There’s no real hurry. I want my daughter to experience the Funny Car. Hell, I may get into that dragster (that Brittany drives).
The 16-time NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Funny Car champion, who earlier this year swapped crew and crew chiefs between his Peak-sponsored Camaro and the similar Auto Club-backed machine of company president and son-in-law Robert Hight, has been testing at Lucas Oil Raceway, a couple of miles from the JFR base in Brownsburg, Ind. Since winning at Gainesville, in mid-March, Force’s Funny Car hasn’t managed to find NHRA’s Winner’s Circle.
“With my situation always changing over the years, I’ve had to go through a rebuilding stage, like any football team,” Force explained during downtime at the track. “Basically, [co-crew chief Mike] Neff kept my ship afloat for two years and did a great job. He’s a very savvy racer.”
Now working with both Neff and Jon Schaffer, who was his primary crew chief over the previous two seasons, Force wanted to try new combinations that might help him end what, for him, is a slump. Last weekend at Norwalk, Courtney Force failed to qualify for the first time in her career, John was out after the quarterfinals and only Hight made it to the finals, defeated by Jack Beckman.
Force thus decided to test new combinations, and added parts made in the JFR shop to effect changes to his Camaro per Prock’s ideas.
“Our teams have evolved and it was time to evolve the combinations,” he said. “There’s a lot of things we’re trying. We’re evolving some of Jimmy’s [Prock] stuff into our car – and it shows potential.”
Force was finally pleased with his four passes down the track on Thursday, stating: “We got the parts and we made more of the transition to a new combination.
“Out of the box, it ran 800-850 feet with a 3.86 [seconds]. We came back in the heat of the day and it ran 3.90. We’re starting to turn the corner.”
Along with Force’s quartet of passes down the 1,000-foot dragstrip, the team tested the team’s development driver Austin Prock, Jimmy Prock’s son. He drove an Advance Auto Parts Top Alcohol dragster owned by Anthony Dicero on the Lucas Oil Raceway strip and earned his license in the category with a lap of 5.478 seconds at 260.11 mph.
