Funny How That Works
John Force has won so many National Hot Rod Assn. funny car championships--nine since 1990 and the last seven in succession--that it is hard to remember that he once was a crazy-talking truck driver from Downey struggling to make a payday.
“It all turned around the day I hired Austin Coil,” Force said of one of his crew chiefs. “I might have won one championship without him--maybe one--but sure not nine. Now that we’ve got Bernie Fedderly too, I might win nine more. We’re sure going to try.”
Co-crew chiefs Coil and Fedderly work with a $4-million budget in a luxurious race shop--it once housed an Infiniti dealership--in Yorba Linda, fielding red, green and white Ford Mustang funny cars for Force, drag racing’s driver of the decade.
Coil joined Force in 1984, Fedderly in 1992.
“We’re like two doctors working on sick race cars, and race cars are always sick,” Coil said. “With two of us, we always have a second opinion.”
Force, 50, does the driving and spends the rest of his time raising money to keep the Mustangs kicking, romancing sponsors, making personal appearances and looking for Elvis memorabilia.
“The less I’m around the shop, the better my old dragster seems to run,” Force said.
Last year might have been Force’s best. He won 11 of 22 final rounds, plus the NHRA’s Winston Showdown, an all-star race pitting top-fuelers against funny cars at Bristol, Tenn. The $200,000 he won for beating top- fueler Bob Vandegriff Jr. in the final helped make Force the first drag racer to earn more than $3 million in a single season.
His quarter-mile run of 4.788 seconds at Houston and his 324.05-mph elapsed time at Gainesville, Fla., are NHRA records. Both were set last year.
“Like I’ve been saying for 15 years, I’ve got to give the credit to my crew chief, Austin Coil, and he’s got Bernie Fedderly backing him up,” Force said.
“Castrol [oil, his sponsor] puts a ton of money [estimated at $3 million] in my cars and I have hired the right people. But besides having the right people and the right money, we had the right attack plan. We love what we do, and we win.
“This can’t go on forever, I know that, but we proved last year that we could beat back any challenges, so we’re ready--Austin, Bernie, all of us--to get it on again this year. Starting this week in Pomona.”
The Autozone Winternationals start with the first round of qualifying today at the Pomona Raceway, with trials continuing Friday and Saturday. Final eliminations are Sunday.
Force bought his first funny car, a Chevrolet Vega, in 1974, but had little to show for years of effort before he talked Coil into leaving Chicago for Southern California.
Coil, 55, was campaigning the Chi-Town Hustler with driver Frank Hawley when Force called in 1984.
“Force called me every 20 minutes for two weeks,” Coil recalled. “When he finally made me an offer, I told him I needed about a week to think about it. He hung up and called me every 20 minutes until I said yes.
“I really didn’t know what I was getting into. He’d never won a national event, although he’d been in a couple of final rounds. His entire budget was less than he paid me last year.”
Did Coil foresee the heights Force has reached?
“Absolutely not,” Coil said, laughing.
It took three years--and 11 runner-up finishes--before Force won his first national event in Montreal. Now he has won 81 and Coil has masterminded them all.
“No way did I see us accomplishing anything like this,” Coil said, indicating the vast garage that holds four Mustangs for Force, four for teammate Tony Pedregon and others in various stages of undress.
When they go to the races, each driver has two cars, with two more back at the shop, or being used as show cars, as backups. The cars, plus equipment to build and rebuild them, are carried in four 18-wheelers. Those, combined with a bus that Force has converted to a traveling home, amount to about 380,000 pounds of Ford vehicles in the Force pits at each race.
“It takes 17 crewmen, plus Bernie, myself and John Medlen [Pedregon’s crew chief], to keep them running,” Coil said. “That’s a lot of logistics, and once the gang . . . heads east in March, we’re on the road nearly every weekend until we come back to Pomona in November [for the season finale].”
Race days are the busiest.
Before Force makes each trip down the strip, Fedderly walks the track, checking on lane conditions, determining where to plant the huge 17-inch rear tires and, during eliminations, which lane to choose.
“I’m on the radio with Coil to let him know where to take the car,” Fedderly said. “It’s especially important after an oil-down, or an accident, just before we run. Knowing track conditions can be tricky because you’ve got to allow for the weather too.”
Just before the car is staged, after Force makes his smoke-filled burnout, Coil lifts the hood and peers into the engine chamber, making last-second adjustments.
“Where the car starts is Bernie’s call,” said Coil. “That way, if John loses traction and goes up in smoke, I can point the finger at him.”
The amount of nitro in the four or five gallons of fuel is up to Coil. Even Force does not have the final say.
“I put the altitude, humidity and temperature into the computer in a formula that gives me a factor that determines the final changes in the tuneup,” Coil said. “Then it’s up to John to drive the thing. If Bernie has it in the right position and I hit the right formula and John keeps it straight, we should have another win.”
Between rounds, the crew dismantles the engine, changing pistons and rods; examines the crankshaft, puts new valves in the heads, checks the blower and sometimes installs a new clutch assembly--parts that can be damaged or destroyed in the 6,000-horsepower explosion. If there is too much internal damage, a new engine will be installed. Until this year, the crew had 90 minutes to make changes. Starting this week, the time will be cut to 75 minutes.
“You might see more engine changes this year because it’s quicker to take the old one out and put in a new one than it is to make repairs,” Fedderly said.
Fedderly, 58, joined the team in midseason 1992, after having been fired by Larry Minor. He had been with Minor’s Hemet-based team for 10 years, during which he had crewed NHRA championship teams for top-fuel driver Gary Beck and funny car driver Ed McCulloch.
“Minor had just landed the McDonald’s sponsorship and hired Cruz Pedregon to drive his funny car, with McCulloch switching to top fuel,” Fedderly said. “We were having trouble with Cruz’s car early in the year. [Supercharger] explosions on the starting line kept blowing the body off. We got into a dispute about why it was happening and I ended up the loser.
“Coil called and said, ‘Come hang out here,’ and I’ve been here ever since.
“Cruz went on to win the championship that year [the only year Force was beaten in the 1990s] and I always figured I had a part in it because I did the groundwork.”
Coil calls Fedderly the peacemaker on Force’s team.
“He keeps John and me from chewing each other’s ear off,” Coil said. “We got into some real shouting matches before Bernie came on, but now he’s a moderator and it’s been great for all of us.”
None of them appears ready to call it a career.
Says Coil: “I’ve spent 15 years with Force and I see no reason to change now. I can’t imagine starting over with a new driver. I’ve probably got 10 to 15 more good years in me.”
Says Fedderly: “It’s getting harder each year to stay on top, but that’s the kind of a challenge I like. Driving the car is Force’s life. Mine is building the perfect race car and this the place to do it.”
Says Force: “I am going to go until the graveyard. This is what I do. I don’t have any other life or any other hobbies. Drag racing, trucks, hot rods, neat paint jobs, shows and the fans is what I do.”
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
The Facts
* What: 40th Autozone Winternationals, round one of National Hot Rod Assn.’s 23-event season.
* Where: Pomona Raceway, at Fairplex.
* When: Today through Sunday.
* Schedule: Today and Friday, time trials, 8:15 a.m., pro qualifying, 2 p.m.; Saturday, time trials, 8:15 a.m., pro qualifying, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.; Sunday, pre-race ceremony, 10 a.m., final eliminations, 11 a.m.
* Tickets: General admission, $15 today, $25 Friday, $45 Saturday, none available Sunday. Juniors $10. Reserved seats, $35 Friday, $55 Saturday, $50-$62 Sunday. Juniors $20 Friday, $22 Saturday, $12-24 Sunday.
* TV: ESPN2 (delayed), Saturday 6:30 p.m., Sunday 7:30.
* Defending event winners: Mike Dunn, top fuel; Tony Pedregon, funny car; Jeg Coughlin, pro stock; Randy Daniels, pro stock truck.
* Defending series champions: Tony Schumacher, top fuel; John Force, funny car; Warren Johnson, pro stock; Bob Panella, pro stock truck.
