Force owns field at Pomona

The death of Eric Medlen and his own crash last season had a profound emotional impact on John Force, the National Hot Rod Assn.’s biggest star. The team owner and driver said his focus was on building a safe race car that would go down the track. After that, his team would work on trying to win races.

In the season-opening Carquest Auto Parts Winternationals on Sunday, Force’s team won sooner rather than later.

Three of his four Yorba Linda-based Ford Mustang funny cars reached the semifinals, and Robert Hight beat Cruz Pedregon by seven feet to win the class on the quarter-mile at Pomona Raceway.

Hight, who finished second in the Powerade Drag Racing Series championship his first two seasons, is the fastest driver in the Nitromethane class to reach 100 round victories. He is 101-58.

Even though he lost power before reaching the finish line, Hight had an elapsed time of 4.861 seconds on a run in which he tripped the speed trap at 284.39 mph, just ahead of Pedregon’s hard-charging Chevrolet Impala at 4.879 seconds and 322.50 mph.

“That’s the technology that came out of Eric’s crash and my crash, and the car works,” said Force, the 14-time champion who smoked his tires against Pedregon in the semifinals.

In top fuel, four-time defending champion Tony Schumacher defeated Anaheim native Cory McClenathan with a 4.499 clocking at 331.28 mph. McClenathan clocked 4.436 at 329.26 mph.

It was Schumacher’s ninth consecutive victory in a final round, dating to his national record-setting performance in the finals at Pomona in 2006. That victory, over Melanie Troxel, was also the last time two dragsters owned by Don Schumacher met in the finals. All four of his runs Sunday were 4.511 seconds or less as he beat, in order, Doug Kalitta, Doug Herbert, Larry Dixon and McClenathan.

With his 42nd victory, Schumacher moved past Dixon on the career list.

Hight had no elapsed time quicker than 5.2 seconds in either of his first two rounds. But matched against his sister-in-law teammate, Ashley Force, in the semifinals, Jimmy Prock’s tuneup came around. Hight ran a 4.842 at 313.73 mph, which sent him to his third consecutive final at the Winternationals. He also won in 2006.

Hight credited Ford engineer Niranjan Singh, who came from the company’s Formula One program and worked nights and holidays on the Force cars.

“He kept saying, ‘We’re a little behind, we’re a little behind,’ but we decided it’s better to be a couple days behind, or even a week, but do it right the first time . . . and it showed today with our performance,” Hight said.

The heavier car incorporates new safety designs and has been scoffed at by some. If it continues to win, the controversial design is sure to be accepted quickly by competitors. It allows for better sightlines, “it steers nice, and when it shakes, it goes straight, it doesn’t want to shake itself out of the groove,” Hight said.

“I’ll be honest, I never got really good at pedaling the car, but the first two rounds I won by pedaling. It was because I could see, I knew where I was at, I could feel the car, and I had it under control quicker. It’s not me. I think it’s the car.”

Three-time pro stock champion Greg Anderson won for the 52nd time, tying Joe Amato for fifth all-time. He set a track record in the final round with a run of 6.616 seconds at 208.3 mph to finish ahead of defending champion Jeg Coughlin’s 6.638 at 208.42 mph.

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martin.henderson@latimes.com