Met John Force at Nationals at Englishtown, NJ. The boys and I stood in line for about an hour and the it got rained out. We returned the next day, got in line Mr. Force noticed my son and called us up to the front, gave my son three signed pistons, my son told Mr. Force your going to win Mr. Force! Yes he did set another track record. Great guy.
Met him in London Ontario while he was out to dinner (waited till he finished) he was doing a demo run at the St Thomas Dragway very gracious and friendly. He's done more for drag racing than everybody except Big Daddy.
Im glad this surfaced. Being part of an nhra race team in the early 2000's I got to see JF and team up close. These guy's are a class act that all other team's look up to. It was an experience I'll never forget. Thank you!
I met John Force at Detroit Autorama some years ago. He was drunk as hell!! We had a pro mod car in our display and the owner wanted JF to sign his car so he came over and tripped and fell on the car. I could not believe what I had just saw! We helped him stand up. He signed the decklid and walked away! He is a wild dude! 😁😁😁😁😁
Gayle Charpentier New Iberia ,Louisiana John Force the Best Fun Car driver ever. ever I have been watching him ever since he started racing ,there will never be another like him GOD BLESS.
I have built and raced cars for 50 yrs. I really enjoyed walking through Force Racing shop. That is quite a family, The Force family. Thanks for the memories !
One of the best days of my life was having a one on one with John at Zmax . I respect and admire this man more than any racer on the planet. So successful yet so humble.
Incredible man with an incredible story. I recall many many years ago watching John Force win a race. He hasn't won races and I recall was losing what sponsors he had. He ran a national race and he said that without that win he probably wouldn't have been able to race. I think that day he was the happiest man on the planet.
John Force : The ever-ready energizer always in hi-gear on fire funny car driver 😎 ( a truck driver / funny car pilot turned into a dragracing legend ! ) Right up there with.... Big Daddy, The Snake, Cha Cha now we can add John Brute Force ✔ He might even be at the top of the list with all of his amazing accomplishments 😆 Year after year he had some of the worst luck then it all turned around after that 1st win in Canada ? & the rest my drag racing friends.... is history ! ✌😎 Now that is a racing shop ! ! ! WOW... race shop / clean room 😉 The best part they can do everything in house !
When I think of drag racing without a doubt he's the man that pops into my mind the leader in the sport the innovation and technology he and his team have is unprecedented . John Force is the man just for that 3 or so seconds. lol Him and his race family are like royalty to the sport.
Teams must own their own shops and fabricate, parts machining, paint etc. They must do basically everything in house to save millions of dollars, it all adds up. Fast. That is how these teams like force,Schumacher and other are able to race year after year. Professional drag racing takes sponsors that can spend millions of dollars. Teams must also run a tight budget. Without that racing as a whole would be very small and different than what it currently is today. I like the fact John Force was a truck driver. Being a truck driver myself, i know John force knew the meaning of sacrifice and hard work long before he went full time drag racing.
I really enjoyed watching this video and learning the behind the scenes of John Force and drag racing I always had a love for it but it made me love it even more so after watching this video
,,,,,,,,,his history , excited interviews , and energy , will never be repeated.....Here in 2022 , life in drag racing is , well , dull , compared to a Force win , and interview......
Well done! I interviewed JF for a magazine article a few years ago, he's a trip! You should check out the SURF CITY GARAGE facility in Huntington Beach. Neat place!
There's more to this shop than I knew about! It is very impressive that JF started out as a truck driver and built the fortune on just drag racing. All the other big team owners have other businesses that keep them racing. That said, we see here Exhibit 'A' as to why NHRA can not always fill a 16-car field at a big national event. How do you compete with Force, Kalitta or Shumacher? In the 1970's, Orange County International Raceway would put on local events with 64 and even 100 funny cars racing...nothing but funny cars all night long! Now, with Covid limiting attendance and the number of events, there will likely be a lot of sponsor money pulling out of drag racing, not to mention the thousands of $60 seats no longer filled. NHRA needs to somehow pull back on the money it takes to race. This would most likely require limitations in the engine, clutch and body departments departments. I would rather see a 32-car field of 270 MPH cars than 15 330-MPH cars. Rather than having one pro car per 10 million population, it would be good to see a couple of FC and TF cars from your average town of 100,000 people. The number of drag strips and events would grow exponentially. This is not to take away from John Force and his team...I have the highest regard for them. But a lot of us enjoyed the 1970's and 1980's much better than we do today's racing.
Nitro racing hasn't been good since they went to 1000 foot racing. Drag racing needs to be done on a quarter mile, 1320 feet. They should have slowed the cars down after Scott Kalitta's crash rather than shorten the tracks. Smaller engines, smaller blowers, less nitro or narrower slicks. Maybe even just fuel injection and no superchargers. 270 mph cars sounds good to me.
Wow This Man Did Good .There's Only ONE J/F .Loves his Sport and Girls Shame We Never Got To See This Man at Santa Pod Raceway in UK where i live .But Noing NHRA They Won't Let Him
he has drove alit different gm cars when i first started watching when i was a little kid was oldsmobile then he went to pontiac the ford then back to gm with chevrolet
Where is John did John and the family decide to sit this season out because of the virus I can’t even watch a race because it’s not the same without John and the family involved Hope to see you and the family soon keep the shiny part up your foot to the floor keep on keeping on John
@@parentsbasement7734 Duh I don’t know why didn’t think of that makes sense to me I swear I must have virus of the brain I need to back off my medicine
@@robertwyatt2720 Not true at all with the reduced number of races he couldn’t meet the sponsor commitments and he chose to pull out rather than break his contracts which would have forced him to race on no sponsor money. Also his major sponsor Chevrolet decided to pull out of NHRA Drag Racing totally.
I've been mad racing and working on funny cars since the '70s! Met him a few times amongst many others! Future of the sport comes from the stands! The computers in the big corporations have killed it! One can sit in the stands and say wow that car was fast and it cost $3 million! Too sad I still match race getting too old to do it now but we used to make our money from tracks and selling T-shirts! But it's been dying since about 93 it won't be around much longer because big money has killed it! Just a thought!
It's a spectator sport!! Always has been! But when you create a scenario where spectator can no longer be involved I'm speaking of the fuel classes and the alcohol classes and the faster classes you've killed the sport!you can start by using your head and taking the computers out of the cars! LOL that'll piss a few folks off!!!
TV companies do this all the time, ticking boxes. In the 1980s in the UK, we craved TV airtime to promote drag racing. The BBCs science weekly, Tomorrow’s World, put on a feature where Dennis Priddle (our best approximation to John Force) produced a trick top methanol dragster for one of the program’s presenters to drive. Three guys and one gal in the team, guess who got to drive. It was entertaining but painful to watch as a lifelong fan of the sport. You can see the strain on Dennis and his team, only offset by the large envelope of cash the BBC probably gave them. All credit to Maggie Philbin for giving it her best but .... well you judge for yourselves... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Wk9VZPWSHrM.html
@@MikeSmith-tx2lp I would like to think the BBC will wake to woke, but I don't think they will. They have just about killed Dr Who with it, but no one seems to care.
i remember those days when john ran on his own budget and had little to work with but he finally got some sponsors and the rest is history. like some have said, racing at all levels has gotten toooooooo far out of hand for some and it needs to be toned back so more can compete and not just a few that have the sponsors to pay for all the expensive stuff needed. F1 is a prime example and that is why i like indy racing because they all use the same chasis so all are on par and the engines and drivers decid who wins.
I have always loved the sport though I've never felt inclined to participate in it professionally myself. Although I can certainly appreciate NHRA rules in regard to safety, I've found many rules of standardization too restrictive for my taste. Although the extreme hp is enticing, nobody can claim that what's going on with the clutches is efficient use of it. Hybrids and electrics are already here and have proven the advantage of their finely controlled torque, but who wants to hear nothing? My thoughts are that if the sport wants to survive the best way would be with a new hybrid class that uses a mil to make the juice to the motors. I think present speeds could be surpassed with less brute force and more finite control, but without giving up the engines we all love to hear. It would be like taking it to another level; and everybody is already using computers anyway right? I don't think it's really that big of a stretch but then they say you can always tell the pioneers by the number of arrows in their backs.
No shit, my grandfather is family with jhon force and my last name is also force, I shit myself when I found out he raced and I was related to him. I have been trying to get into contact with jhon for a while and nothing.
I made it to 15:43 before I hit the mute button. It's a one-sided conversation between a legendary R&D man and someone who looks and sounds like a failed volleyball player. It wouldn't have even occurred to me to annoy anyone inside this legendary shop unless I could produce at least five or six intelligent questions for maybe the janitor.
What part or "shop tour" did you not understand? It's not an interview. It's a shop tour, you know, "here's where we make engines", here's where we make stickers", "here's some of John's old suits".
