Force

A first-round loss in Pomona, Calif., to begin the year. A second-round loss at the following race in Phoenix. Tenth place in the POWERade Funny Car standings all in the midst of surgically correcting a stubborn gall bladder problem this past week.

It hasn't been a typical season so far for John Force.

Last year, he won the opening race of the season, briefly relinquished the points lead to his team driver, Gary Densham, and then out-pointed his other teammate, Tony Pedregon, in the final few races of the year to ice his 12th title. Could what we're seeing to begin the 2003 campaign signal a disturbing trend for the sport's winningest driver?

Not if you ask him.

"They've been trying to declare this ol' truck driver was over the hill before," said Force while relaxing at his Yorba Linda, Calif., home before the next race, the Mac Tools Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., in two weeks. "But I'm feeling great after the operation last Thursday and not to have to deal with the pain I was in has already made a difference. Besides, we've got 21 races left this year and nobody's won every round of racing we've had so far. We've got all the time we need."

The team is awaiting delivery of their new Ford Mustang bodies which are expected to be finished and in race trim by the time the tour reaches Las Vegas in early April for the SummitRacing.com Nationals. According to Force's long-time tuner Austin Coil the benefits of the new bodies will be more apparent in the area of weight rather than aerodynamics.

"We haven't had them to the wind tunnel yet," he said last week during the event in Phoenix. "But we're looking at saving some weight compared to the bodies we're running now and we think that will show us some improvement."

After a spectacular start to the season, Tony Pedregon suffered a second-round loss to eventual race winner Ron Capps in Phoenix, which may have been a wakeup call to Team Castrol that the Funny Car class will be taking dead aim at stopping Force and Co. in 2003 after seeing a near 1-2-3 sweep in the final standings in 2002. But Force has been there before.

"It's nothing we haven't had to deal with," he said. "But this year you've got three cars over there at Schumacher's, Snake's team just won last week and they're itching to win the championship, Worsham's driver (Johnny Gray) almost got that win in Pomona and that Wilkerson kid isn't too far away from winning some races, too. But we qualified 1-2-3 in Phoenix, Tony just barely got beat by Capps and Densham ran quicker than Capps in the final but that kid had a heck of a light, so we're not ready to panic just yet."

Force's comments echo the same messages we heard in 1998, when he went winless until the eighth race of the season in Englishtown, N.J. He eventually won the championship but was given a real scare by Ron Capps in the stretch drive. 2001 also had its unsettling moments, when Force had but a single victory in the last ten races, but won his 11th championship thanks to the five national event wins he had tallied earlier.

Will 2003 be any different? Will the competition finally find the magic formula that will end John Force's remarkable streak of success?

"If they do", he says, "they'll have to work harder than we do, and if they can, I'll be impressed."