Force Feels Funny About His Victory

Leave it to John Force, the most dominant drag racer of the 90s, to uphold the honor of National Hot Rod Assn. champions in Sunday’s final event of the season, the Winston Select Finals.

Sort of.

The six-time funny car champion from Yorba Linda had to be embarrassed, however, as he smoked his tires off the starting line in the final round and his Pontiac Firebird crept down the quarter-mile in 15.074 seconds, the slowest run of the day.

Force won because the other finalist and his teammate, Tony Pedregon, was unable to start his engine, leaving his boss with a solo run.

“I don’t like to win this way, it’s not good for the fans,” Force said. “I wish there was some way we could come back and run tomorrow morning. It’d be a hell of a race.”

Kenny Bernstein will collect $200,000 for the top fuel championship and Jim Yates $125,000 for the pro stock title at the NHRA banquet tonight in Cerritos, but neither could muster a victory Sunday. Force will also collect $200,000.

Joe Amato, with one of the most consistent series of runs in top fuel history, won his 36th national event--an NHRA record--in defeating Scott Kalitta, who Saturday had won a $100,000 bonus in the Budweiser Classic.

Amato had lost in the opening round of the Budweiser Classic when he was left at the starting line against Cory McClenathan.

“What a difference a day makes,” Amato said. “Yesterday the driver was zero for zero. Today he was zero to hero. One thing you learn in years of drag racing, there are a lot of different ways you can lose, and a lot of different ways you can win.”

Michael Edwards of Broken Arrow, Okla., defeated Rickie Smith of King, N.C., in the pro stock finals after Edwards had upset defending champion Warren Johnson and recently crowned 1996 champion Jim Yates.

In the only series championship decided Sunday, five-time pro stock motorcycle champion David Schultz made it six by overcoming a 22-point deficit against defending champion John Myers.

Myers, of Birmingham, Ala., was sidelined in a stunning first-round upset by Stephanie Reaves of Gorham, Me., one of two women in the 16-bike final.

“We felt we were ready to unload some big numbers, we felt very confident, but then the transmission stuck when I tried to shift from second to third,” Myers said. “We were ahead then, but Stephanie rode right on by us. She told me she was sorry [to knock him out of the title] but I told her she won it fair and square and to be proud of it.”

Even with Myers out, Schultz had to win two rounds to earn the $30,000 championship bonus. He lost in the finals, but by then he was already the champion.

Angelle Seeling, Myers’ teammate, the national record holder and the other woman in the finals, lost in the second round against John Smith when her engine failed about 100 yards from the finish line.

Smith, from Minneapolis, went on to upset Schultz in the finals. It was the first win for Smith as he came from behind in mid-track to win with a 7.42 second run.

Before Force put the lid on his sixth championship, Tony Pedregon won the battle of the funny car-driving brothers in a first round head-to-head match with Cruz. By winning--it was easy after Cruz’s hopes went up in smoke off the starting line--the younger Pedregon clinched second place in the season standings behind Force.

“We never had a handle on the clutch all weekend,” said Cruz. “Tony and the Force team did their job and they deserve to be No. 1 and 2 in the standings. Hats off to Tony. No hard feelings--we’re still brothers.”

Force said watching Tony beat his brother “was the highlight of the whole day. There was a lot of pressure on him, but he handled it perfectly.”

The engine in Tony’s Pontiac broke in the semifinals against Kenji Okazaki, but Pedregon was declared the winner because Okazaki jumped the start and was disqualified. It took Pedregon 11.8 seconds to reach the finish line, but it got him into the finals. Okazaki’s 294.21 mph run in 5.0 seconds went for naught.

The broken engine took its toll, however, when the crew could not get the new one fired for the finals.

“It was a bad break, especially when we watched John’s tires go up in smoke in his solo,” Tony Pedregon said.

A milling crowd that lined both sides of the drag strip helped swell the four-day attendance to an announced 112,000.