A Perfect Reaction From Force

Any lingering thoughts that teammates John Force, the boss, and Tony Pedregon, the protege, might manipulate the outcome of their National Hot Rod Assn. funny-car championship battle were dispelled Sunday in a dramatic side-by-side semifinal at Pomona Raceway.

It came down to this: If Force won, it would give him a 10th consecutive championship and 12th overall. If Pedregon won, it would be his first, but the 12th for Force’s Yorba Linda-based team.

Force won, but barely. The 53-year-old veteran got the jump on Pedregon off the line with a reaction time of 0.447 of a second to 0.471, and maintained it through the quarter-mile. Pedregon’s time to the finish line was faster, 4.935 seconds to 4.954, but because of the reaction time Force’s Castrol Mustang got there first.

Most of the 45,000 fans were on their feet as Force crossed the final stripe less than a foot in front. The official margin was 0.005 of a second.

In the anticlimactic final in the 38th Auto Club NHRA Finals, Force defeated Tommy Johnson Jr., one of Don Prudhomme’s drivers, in another tight finish. Again, it was Force’s remarkable reaction time that enabled him to win his 106th event.

It was the eighth win of the season for Force, the sixth time he has won as many as eight in one year. No other funny-car driver has won eight in a season.

Force was his ebullient self in accepting the champion’s trophy. “I am going to go home and call all the sponsors and tell them this old man is still alive and don’t throw him away yet,” he said. “I want to thank God for the sunshine, and I want to thank the NHRA [President] Tom Compton, the racers, fans and the media -- they make it happen.”

The win was worth $400,000 for the Powerade title and $40,000 for the event.

Culminating a comeback from 2001 when he did not race for lack of a sponsor, Cory McClenathan took the $40,000 top-fuel prize by defeating surprise finalist Yuichi Oyama of Japan. McClenathan, who is looking for a sponsor for 2003, also won with superior reaction off the line even though Oyama ran 4.739 to 4.756.

“This was an awesome win,” the Anaheim veteran said. “It looked for a while that I wasn’t going to win this year, but this made the effort all worthwhile.”

Few events in recent history have seen as many first-round surprises.

Two of the three NHRA champions crowned before coming to Pomona -- Larry Dixon in top fuel and Angelle Savoie in pro-stock bike -- were gone before many of the fans were in their seats.

Top fuel, the first class to test the rain-washed racing strip, lost, in addition to Dixon, the retiring Kenny Bernstein and No. 1 qualifier Darrell Russell.

Bernstein’s exit was the most surprising. It came in the 970th round of his illustrious career, at the hands of rookie Oyama, driving an eight-year-old dragster he purchased from Robert Reehl of Whittier. It was only the 11th time Oyama had made a competitive run.

“It’s certainly not the way you want to go out,” said Bernstein, winner of four funny-car and two top-fuel titles. “You want to win at least a couple of rounds, but that’s the nature of this business. It happens.”

Because it had rained for two days and the top-fuel dragsters can apply as much as 1,800 pounds of downforce through their 6,000-horsepower engines, it was a guessing contest how to set up the skittish machines for their 300-plus mph runs.

“Everybody was in the same boat, we were no different from anyone else,” said Bernstein in defusing an obvious excuse. “We’d love to have had three or four [qualifying] runs, but it was the same for everybody. Nobody got an advantage. It’s just one of those deals.”

Oyama, 39, is a six-time top-alcohol funny-car champion in Japan. After attending Frank Hawley’s drag racing school in Gainesville, Fla., he competed on the International Hot Rod Assn. circuit in 1998 and made his NHRA debut this year at the Pomona Winternationals, where he lost in the first round.

Curiously, when racing in Japan, Oyama drives a dragster formerly driven by Bernstein.

Dixon, who clinched his first top-fuel title two weeks ago in Las Vegas, saw his tires go up in smoke off the starting line in losing to No. 15 qualifier Scott Weis, driving the Race Girl team dragster. Russell, after qualifying No. 1 Thursday, was no match for nonqualifier Andrew Cowin as he limped down the quarter-mile at 92 mph. Cowin, from Australia, was driving the pinstriped Yankee car for Darrell Gwynn. He failed to qualify Thursday but was seeded into the final eliminations because he was in the top 10 in the year’s standings.

Savoie, after taking her third consecutive pro-bike championship at Las Vegas, was faster and quicker than Scott Lewis in a battle of Suzukis, but Lewis beat her off the starting line with a reaction time of 0.419 of a second to 0.620 for the champion. Savoie ran 7.191 seconds at 185.41 mph to 7.337 and 182.28 for the quicker starting winner.

Matt Hines won the bike final, defeating Geno Scali, the only rider among the 16 finalists not on a Suzuki. He was riding a Kawasaki.

In pro stock, Kurt Johnson avenged his father Warren’s defeat by beating Gene Wilson in the finals. Wilson, in a Dodge Neon, had sidelined No. 1 qualifier Warren Johnson on the semifinal, but in the final, Kurt’s Chevrolet Cavalier won, 6.801 to 6.843.

“We needed this after 47 races without a win and it’s nice to be able to take some money back home,” said Johnson, who collected $25,000 to take home to Lawrenceville, Ga.