FORCE RACING MUSTANGS TEST WELL AT LAS VEGAS

[ 10/30/2002 ]

FORCE-PEDREGON DUEL MOVES TO SEASON FINALE AT POMONA

BY TEAM FORD RACING CORRESPONDENT

Yorba Linda, Calif. — John Force returned to his race car shop Wednesday pleased with the resurgence of his Castrol GTX Ford Mustang, but concerned about the newest weak link in an engine and drivetrain assembly regularly subjected to the stresses of 7,000 horsepower.

Force and Ford teammate Gary Densham stayed over in Las Vegas after the weekend running of the second annual AC/Delco Las Vegas Nationals to address the issue of a recent spate of supercharger drive belt failures.

The most recent occurred in the final round Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway where Force just managed to hold off teammate Tony Pedregon, 4.820 seconds to 4.869 seconds.

Although both cars had accelerated beyond 320 miles per hour earlier in the event, Force slowed to 305.22 mph and Pedregon to a little over 301 mph in the final after both suffered drive belt failures.

While everyone in the Funny Car and Top Fuel divisions has had to deal with belt problems this year, the problem has become acute at the Force camp, which is why two of the top four cars in the sport were back on the racetrack Monday morning.

During the impromptu test session, during which Force also took time out to drive a prototype of a retro Ford pickup truck, Crew Chief Austin Coil videotaped the action of the supercharger assembly on a typical run.

What was determined was that the snout on the setback blower the team developed last winter was flexing and, as a result, putting more than normal strain on the belts.

That determined, neither Coil nor co-Crew Chief Bernie Fedderly was able to develop a quick fix, sending all three of the Force Fords into the season finale at Pomona Raceway not knowing when the next failure might occur.

That’s a situation that doesn’t fill Force with great confidence.

“You could lose a belt in the first round,” said the 105-time tour winner. “Look at what happened to us at Vegas. First qualifying session, we threw a belt off at the start. No warning. Just gone. It can happen any time. Even if you put a new belt on every run, there’s no guarantee.

“Once it breaks, you can’t take it back. There’s no warranty on these things.”

Aside from the blower belt issue, there are few other distractions remaining at Force Racing, which already is assured of a 1-2-4 finish with an outside shot at an unprecedented 1-2-3 finish.

Densham, the former auto shop teacher from Bellflower, Calif., is just 31 points behind third place Del Worsham entering the season’s last event. That’s the same number of points by which Pedregon trails Force.

Force can clinch his 10th-consecutive NHRA Powerade Funny Car title simply by doing what he does better than anyone else – reaching the final round. His final round appearance at Las Vegas, his first in five appearances at the Bruton Smith track, was the 162 final of his career.

Pedregon, performing at a level that in almost any other discipline would already have earned him a championship, must win two more rounds than his boss at the Finals to duplicate what his brother, Cruz, accomplished 10 years ago.

“Obviously, it’s not over,” Pedregon said from Detroit, where he was spending time with his daughter, Cecily, “but we really missed an opportunity at Las Vegas. To win it now, we’re going to have to have some help or we’re going to have to have conditions under which you conceivably could set a national record [worth 20 bonus points].

“You have to credit John, though. They’ve been struggling and, at Las Vegas, they stepped up their performance, just like I said they would. John’s not going to give anyone the championship – and I wouldn’t want to get it that way. We’re racing for it and that’s all we could ask for.”

With his win at Las Vegas, Force achieved a couple more milestones. Firstly, he became the first driver to win at least seven races in seven different seasons (1990, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2002). Secondly, he became the first driver in history, in any category, to win 800 rounds of championship racing.

Still, he isn’t comfortable on the eve of the season finale.

“We 4.90s at 260 miles-an-hour [in testing],” Force said, “so we’re pretty sure our ol’ hot rod is back. I just don’t want the title to be decided by something stupid,” he said, “like a blower belt. You just go to the line every time holding your breath and hoping it doesn’t go.”