ALL FOUR FORCE RACING FORDS TO COMPETE IN ACDELCO NATIONALS
Hight Will Have Help in Bid for NHRA POWERade Funny Car Championship
LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- After being driven Friday from his Yorba Linda,
Calif., home to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to meet,
face-to-face, with his drivers and crew chiefs, injured drag racing
champion John Force ended speculation about his team's participation in
this week's seventh annual ACDelco Las Vegas Nationals by certifying as
race-ready all four of his Ford Mustang Funny Cars.
Before Friday's meeting, only title contender Robert Hight's Automobile
Club of Southern California Mustang had received an okay to compete in
the season's next-to-last race. The other three Fords were held back
while new chassis data was analyzed by crew chiefs Austin Coil, Bernie
Fedderly, John Medlen, Jimmy Prock and Dean Antonelli.
Hight's car was excepted because it was built by a different
chassis manufacturer using a different process. The cars driven by
Rookie-of-the-Year candidate Ashley Force, newly-licensed rookie Mike
Neff and veteran Phil Burkart Jr., were released to compete after Force
received certain re-assurances from his brain trust.
Hight, the only Ford driver qualified for the NHRA's Countdown to One,
drove a chassis built originally by Steve Plueger during last week's
open test on the same Las Vegas track. Originally built for Force, the
car was sold to a third party but never raced in competition.
Nevertheless, it required extensive modification to incorporate safety
measures developed in the aftermath of Eric Medlen's fatal crash during
testing at Gainesville, Fla., in March and Force's Sept. 23 crash at the
Texas Motorplex in Dallas, Texas.
Force, who suffered extensive injuries to his feet, legs and hands when
the chassis beneath his Castrol-backed Ford came apart at 320 miles per
hour, still is confined to wheelchair because of his foot injuries and
next week will undergo additional surgery on broken bones in his right
foot.
-credit: jfr
