Now in her third year in the NHRA Funny Car series, Ashley Force Hood and
her team have become a "force" to be reckoned with. Ashley, who won
earlier this year at the O'Reilly Spring Nationals in Houston, TX, and her
crew chief, Dean "Guido" Antonelli, talk about what makes their team so
strong and how she has grown as a driver in her two-plus seasons on in the
series.
ASHLEY FORCE HOOD - Castrol GTX Ford Mustang
HOW HAS THE TEAM CHANGED
FROM THE FIRST YEAR? "The first year was all about learning all of our
jobs. Each guy had to learn what they do on the car, get it fine-tuned and
learn how to do it quickly between rounds. That's not an easy thing to do,
especially when you know mistakes are made, and you learn from those
mistakes, but that's all part of it. I think that was our first year. Our
second year was kind of fine tuning that. Fortunately, we had the same
group of guys; only one or two guys were different, so that really makes a
big difference in the fact that that you know it's the same basic group,
they've built on what they've learned the first year. The second year we
were still working on those same things, and this year I think Ron
[Douglas] and Guido have really pushed the guys to remember that it's all
in the details. It's not just doing the job but how perfect you can do it,
and double-checking everything. That makes a big difference. A lot of
rounds are lost just because of something so simple and easy, that it was a
mistake that someone didn't double-check something. Our team, we rarely
have those issues. If we lose a round it's because the temperature has
changed or maybe I've got it out of the groove. It's never something with
the crew guys, or a technicality that the crew guys made a mistake on, and
that just gives us so much more of a chance, I think, at doing well when
you don't have to think about those little minor details. They've really
worked hard to do that and they actually double-check each other. I
actually see it when we go to warm up, one guy checks something, the other
guy checks the same thing and that makes a big difference I believe. It all
adds up."
ONLY HAVING ONE OR TWO CHANGES TO THE CREW AND KNOWING THEIR ATTENTION TO
DETAIL MUST BE A MAJOR COMFORT. "It is. It makes a big difference when you
get someone new. Even if they've come from a different team they're going
to learn things differently or have a different way of doing things. You
have to re-teach them. You have to get them use to our routine and working
with this group of people, and that takes some time to get those kinks
worked out. Fortunately, our one new guy Matt came from Dad's team, so we
learn from that team, too, and his routine probably didn't change very
much; he knows how it goes. Our other new guy came from Del Worsham's team,
so they both had a lot of experience, so we weren't trying to teach a brand-
new person, we were just fine-tuning them to how our team runs. I really
think you see how good my guys get along and I think it makes a difference
when something does go wrong, or if there's a mistake, even if they're not
quite sure. I don't know that much about working on cars, but I know it can
be nerve-wracking if you think that you've made a mistake. Do you say
something or do you not? These guys are so comfortable with Guido and Ron
they'll go and they'll tell them. It totally makes me more comfortable
because I know they're willing to take getting into trouble to make sure
the car's right. I never think they would let anything pass on accident
with this car, and I hope that all teams run like that, but you never know
how teams run. You're in a rush and suddenly you realize something, same
thing with me and my car. I'm always worried and I double-check a hundred
times, because I'm like, 'What if I go up to start my car and one of my arm
restraints isn't hooked in? What do I do?' You know you can't make that
pass when you know there's something that is really wrong, or my helmet is
not strapped on right or whatever it is, so to keep that from happening I
check everything about 10 times. That's the same with the guys, it's not
about getting me in trouble, it's about giving me a safe car and its really
about making Ron and Guido proud of them. They're very close with them, and
they really want them to be happy with them and I think it makes our guys
double-check more than maybe people on other teams who don't care so much
what there crew chiefs think or are scared of their crew chief. That's not
the way we are in our camp. We're all very close. If there is a mistake,
whether it's me on my part, or the crew, we're willing for the good of the
team to go up announce the mistake and make the right change. Luckily it
doesn't happen very often and I think it's because we all double-check
everything so much. At least we know we're all on the same page. We know
what we need to do and if something's not right, we know we need to fix
it."
TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF AS A DRIVER. YOU SAID YOU'RE A LITTLE MORE
COMFORTABLE. WHAT ELSE? YOU'RE IN YOUR THIRD YEAR NOW. IS IT JUST THE
FAMILIARITY WITH THE ROUTINE? "It is, and being in different experiences.
Obviously, there will be many more that I'm not experiencing, but I have
been in a lot of different situations now with this car. Now I'm learning
from those. I kind of have those in the back of my mind, but when a new
tire shake, or tire smoke or whatever it is, I now have something in the
back of my mind to reference and go 'What do I need to do right now to make
the right choice in this car?' My first two years I didn't have that much
experience behind me especially since they gave me a good car. I do joke
with Guido that when things do go wrong I don't know what to do because
they rarely do go wrong. The car usually goes A to B. They give me such a
great car that, you know, I have great experience in going A to B, but what
about the struggles? I always joke with Guido about that because I
obviously would rather have a really good car than one that struggles every
run. It is the experience that you get, that now when I'm in a situation
I'm not having to think, 'What do I need to do?' Your body kind of reacts
because it's been in that situation before, and I think that that is the
key to all of this. I can say that I've learned from some of the best
drivers in Funny Car. I've learned from my father, learned from Robert
[Hight], these are people that have really honed in on their skills, and
Dad has a lot of years of experience. Who else better to teach you then
someone with over 30 years of experience? I made a lot of mistakes my first
year, because you can teach someone something but that doesn't mean they're
going to do the perfect thing in that car going 300 miles per hour and they
get sideways. You probably learn more from that experience than someone
telling you. A perfect example is my Seattle crash. I don't know how many
times I've been in the car since then, and when I start going into a
situation that's similar, I have flashbacks of that crash and think, 'Well,
I know what I don't want to do now.' It all happens so quick, but it really
goes through your mind and you remember, 'I need to make sure this car is
laying straight, I don't need to worry about the guy in the other lane
because when I did that I got myself in trouble.' It's those experiences
that teach you 20 times more than a good A to B run, because that's all you
have to learn from really."
****
DEAN ANTONELLI - Crew Chief, Castrol GTX Ford Mustang
WHAT HAS BEEN THE
BIG DIFFERENCE GOING INTO THIS YEAR COMPARED TO THE PAST TWO YEARS? " I
guess for starters, the longer that a group of people are together the
better they jell together. Last season we only replaced one person on the
team, so that means that our routines didn't vary that much on the race
cars and preparation of the race cars is probably more accurate. Probably
90 percent of the performance of the car is the preparation. A split second
makes a difference of winning or losing, and so if the car isn't prepared
the same every time within the clutch setup within thousandths of an inch
or the compression within thousandths of an inch or something like that,
the kits aren't working properly, all that affects a performance and it
doesn't matter how great a tuner you are if the car isn't safe every time
you're making changes for the variation of the preparation of the car.
You're chasing your tail. I think Ron and I have the greatest group of guys
that I've worked with in a number of years since Robert, myself, Eric
Medlen and Kevin McCarthy all worked on John's car in the early 2000s, late
'90s. It's probably the best group of guys I've seen since then."
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO KEEP THAT CONTINUITY OF THE GROUP WITH THE LIMITED
TESTING? "That's one of the advantages of having multi-car teams, is all of
us have basically the same components and we might all do things a little
different to get to the goal as far as our tuning philosophies go, but we
can look at everyone's data and narrow down what we need to do. Without the
testing, we used to test on Mondays, if you ran four cars, that's at least
three runs each; I mean, that's 12 passes worth of data and now we have to
use our weekends. Like the race in Atlanta, we used Saturday for testing
some components because we knew we couldn't test on Monday. We're allowed
four days' worth of testing which means, you're going to try and cram five
or six runs in a day now, which is kind of hard to absorb that much data
when you're just hot-lapping the thing. With only four days of testing
available, we're planning on having a shot at winning the championship this
year so we don't want to waste our days early in the year and then the
Countdown comes and we don't have days to test, so we're trying to do
everything we can, test on Saturdays if we're solid in the show on Friday,
maybe try some components that the other guys are running on or something
like that on Saturday."
WHAT'S THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE YOU SEE IN ASHLEY FROM THE LAST COUPLE OF
YEARS TO THIS YEAR? DOES SHE SEEM MORE AT EASE WITH HER ROLE? "She's
starting to believe in herself a little bit more because I can't imagine
driving one of these things, period, and having the pressure, if you get a
foot out of the groove it's going to smoke the tires, or if you're just a
flick of the eyes late on the trees you're going to lose, things like that.
That pressure has got to be tremendous on the driver, but she's got it
worse because her last name is Force. She's expected to do well, and then
on top of that she's a woman so then there's that pressure. You know
really, there hasn't been any successful woman in Funny Car; I mean,
Shirley Muldowney was dominant in Top Fuel, and Melanie Troxl had a pretty
good run there for a bit in Top Fuel, but in Funny Car there's been a
number who have tried and haven't had any success, so the pressure on her
from many angles is unbelievable. This year she's a little more confident,
so she's a little bit more at ease with herself and she believes that when
she steps on the gas she's going to corral this thing down the groove just
where it needs to be. I think she's also got a little bit of confidence
that the thing's going to be there for her, too, so she doesn't feel like
if she's not perfect on the tree that she doesn't have a chance. I just
think she believes in herself a little more. Ford has helped us
tremendously with the safety of all of these race cars, and actually as far
as why Ashley seems to be more comfortable, that's another thing with all
the engineering support they've given us with the chassis design and the
drivers box and all that stuff. That's another thing that's because they
want to match their driver's safety with our driver's safety and that's
what gives John Force the confidence. Knowing that all his drivers have a
better chance than anybody else out there and surviving a catastrophic
accident helps, and that's what also helps Ashley out, too, knowing that
she's in the best car available."
ASHLEY'S CAR HAS BEEN THE FASTEST CAR OUT THERE ALMOST EVERY WEEK. IS THAT
THE TYPE OF GROOVE YOU GUYS ARE IN WHERE EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE FALLING
INTO PLACE? "Yeah, Ron and I know that when you have two crew chiefs it's
imperative that you guys have the same views so you aren't bucking heads.
Ron and I kind of believe in the same theories as far as applications and
stuff, so right now, yeah, I guess we're kind of in a groove. I mean, they
joke that we can make it go down a dirt road, but when we ask it to do
something, if we make a change to pick it up at the 330-foot increment, it
does. If we ask for it to run harder in the middle, it does, or if we
contraction a marginal, like in Atlanta, there was a bump in the left lane
at about 100-250 feet, and that's where a lot of cars were smoking the
tires. Well, we asked the car to do something, to cruise through there and
then to stand on after and it does it, so the car just responds Again
that's a testament to the preparation the guys do."
JOHN MEDLEN INDICATED AT THE END OF THE SEASON ALL OF THE CARS WOULD BE
RUNNING THE BOSS 500. ARE YOU A LITTLE NERVOUS ABOUT MAKING THAT JUMP AT
THIS POINT BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS GOING SO WELL RIGHT NOW? "There are
components that I would be scared to death to change, like the engine
block, but putting the Boss 500 in it, if anything, is going to enhance our
chance of winning. We believe it's a little more durable piece. NHRA has
our hands tied on the design of the block, you know the cam shaft, the
crank location and lifter location, we can't change any of that, so what
Medlen concentrated on was making a block that was more durable, more rigid
and didn't move around as much. Medlen's car was the first, Mike Neff had
it in his car, and the first run on it. Medlen said, 'Man, this thing revs
up easier,' and, of course, with the nitro car you can convince yourself of
a million different things that work, but really its just the air was a
little better or whatever. Then [Austin] Coil was the next when he put it
in John's car, and he said, 'This thing revs up a little bit easier,' and,
of course, the same thing happened with Robert Hight, so we're excited to
get it in, but we got to make sure that each car is fully outfitted because
you don't want to go back and forth with it. If it does rev up a little bit
easier you don't want to have to put in a different block in and lose
horsepower. So we're excited to get it. We're not afraid to get it. We look
forward to getting it in there."
-credit: ford racing
