Force to reckon with

By PETE YOUNG

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 18, 2000

The next time a debate over who is the dominant race car driver arises, maybe Sunday during the Daytona 500 or at the next neighborhood barbecue, let others spout the virtues of NASCAR's Dale Jarrett or Jeff Gordon, or CART's Juan Montoya.

Kick back and finish your burger. When they're finished babbling, snatch the air from their spoiler with the following nuggets:

In 1999, John Force won his ninth National Hot Rod Association Winston Funny Car championship. He has won seven consecutive titles, nine in 10 years.

Force outdistanced runner-up Tony Pedregon by a whopping 467 points last season. By comparison, the separation between first and 10th in the Top Fuel division standings was 357 points. ESPN2's racing show, RPM 2Night, compiled a list of the Top 50 North American racers of the 20th century. Force was the only drag racer in the Top 10.

Force won 11 races in 13 final round appearances in 1999, plus the inaugural Winston Showdown. With 87 career victories, he is the winningest Funny Car driver in history.

In short, Force is the force in racing today. But will the new boss be the same as the old boss in 2000? There are signs of chinks in the 50-year-old Force's armor -- when he's at Pomona (Calif.) Raceway, at least.

Force didn't win the final event of 1999 or the season opener in 2000, both at Pomona. Force was first in qualifying with a 4.893-second elapsed time Feb. 3-6 at the AutoZone Winternationals, and on three of his six runs, his top speed surpassed 310 mph. However, Pedregon knocked him off by a whisker in a quarterfinal, primarily due to reaction time.

Third-year Funny Car driver Jerry Toliver, 49, a former drag boat racer whose home track is Pomona, won the past two races there for his first two career victories. If he can match that success away from home, Toliver could put a halt to Force's remarkable title streak.

Pedregon, 34, Force's teammate since 1996, also is a threat. He and Force are the only Funny Car drivers in history to better 320 mph and a 4.8 elapsed time.

At Pomona, 310 mph was surpassed several times in Funny Car and 320 mph was eclipsed three times in Top Fuel. Those results are comparable to a year ago and suggest that the rules changes for this season (most notably a cap on the amount of nitromethane in the fuel -- 90 percent -- for Top Fuel and Funny Cars), which were implemented in part to harness speed, won't curtail things very much, if at all.

In Top Fuel, reigning points champion Tony Schumacher, the first driver to surpass 330 mph, and runner-up Gary Scelzi appear poised to stay at the top of the standings. Scelzi, 39, nipped Schumacher, 30, in the final of the season-opening event. Joe Amato, 55, third in points in 1999, had two of the three 320-plus passes at Pomona but smoked the tires in his semifinal against Schumacher.

In Pro Stock, Warren Johnson, runner-up to Jeg Coughlin in the opening event, has been nearly as impressive as Force in recent years. The 56-year-old has won five Pro Stock titles, including the past two years, and he won at least one race each of the past 18 years, the longest active streak in drag racing. He won nine races in 1999 as he easily outdistanced Coughlin for the title.

The queen of the Pro Stock Bikes, Angelle Seeling, 29, missed out on her first title in 1999 by a fraction to the king, Matt Hines, 1,208 to 1,200 points. Hines, 27, will be gunning for his fourth consecutive title in 2000.

There's one new event on the calendar this season. The SummitRacing.com Nationals in Las Vegas on April 6-9 makes it 23 sanctioned events plus the Winston Showdown.

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