Ashley Force Hood and the Castrol GTX Ford Mustang raced to their sixth final in ten races this season with a solid effort at the 30th annual MOPAR Mile High NHRA Nationals. She held onto the points lead as the NHRA Western Swing leaves Denver headed to Seattle next weekend for the 22nd annual Northwest NHRA Nationals. The youngest driver in the John Force Racing stable was defeated in the final by veteran Ron Capps for the second time this season. Her 4.231 second run was no match for No. 1 qualifier Capps’ 4.187 second pass. In Norwalk, Ohio, two weeks ago Force Hood bested Capps in a wild second round match-up that saw her take the points lead with the round win.
She is the only female to ever lead the Funny Car points and is the only Funny Car driver who has led the points both this season and last season. Even with her success behind the wheel Bandimere Speedway got the best of Force Hood the first two times she raced here. She turned over a new leaf at Thunder Mountain today picking up her first career round win and racing all the way to the final round.
“We have never done well in Denver. I love coming to Denver. We just seemed to have bad luck. My rookie year we didn’t qualify and last year we lost in the first round. When we won first round today we were pretty pumped to finally cross that boundary. Then we just kept going rounds. I never felt quite for sure in qualifying. We seemed to struggle to get where we wanted to be as far as tuning the car and me driving the car. I never felt quite as confident as a lot of other tracks we have been at this year. We were surprising ourselves when we were going rounds,” said Force Hood.
The disappointment of not getting into the winner’s circle was softened by the knowledge that she has arguably the most consistent Funny Car in the class with seven straight and counting semi-final appearances this season.
“Of course we wanted to win. I’ll take a runner up especially looking back at the Friday night sideways run. I didn’t know if we would have a car to run during that pass. Thank goodness we got through the rain and were able to get the race in. We are bummed but give us half an hour we’ll be back to our normal selves. We’ll be able to see the bigger picture that we made it to another final. We just need to keep doing that. (If you go to) semis and finals all year long that can do a lot at the end of the year,” said the 2007 rookie of the year.
Force Hood had to race through teammate Robert Hight to get to the final. That situation is one that has become a little too familiar for John Force Racing and one that the team is always looking to avoid.
“We have no control over the ladder after we qualify. It is how it is. We are just lucky that it hasn’t happened more than it has. That is how it fell this weekend and the positive side is you know that whoever wins you are sending a teammate into the next round. When I ran Robert we knew one of us was going to the final. That takes a little pressure off your shoulders. You can have a little more fun,” concluded Force Hood.
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