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Unwilling to accept his team’s 2011 results as just an unexpected bump in the road, John Force made a series of aggressive off-season moves designed to return his namesake team to its customary position atop the NHRA Funny Car standings.
Force, a 15-time series champion, will start the 2012 season with a beefed-up brain trust of crew chiefs and mechanics who will race four Ford Mustang Funny Cars under the John Force Racing, Inc., banner instead of the three with which they finished the 2011 season and will expand the racing technology and safety program at JFR working with Ford Motor Company.
“Racing provides a platform for technology transfer and R&D between the track and production vehicles,” said Jamie Allison, Director of Ford Racing. “Ford has a longstanding relationship with John Force Racing and the NHRA on safety which is one of Ford’s pillars.”
Returning for 2012 will be Force and his Castrol GTX HIGH MILEAGE Ford Mustang, 2009 series champion Robert “Top Gun” Hight and his Automobile Club of Southern California Ford Mustang and 2011 regular-season champion Mike Neff behind the wheel of the Castrol GTX Ford Mustang.
New to this year’s pro tour, but certainly not new to JFR, is 23-year-old Courtney Force, who next month will debut her Traxxas Ford Mustang at the 52ndannual Kragen O’Reilly Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona.
While Courtney will be following in the footsteps of her father and older sister Ashley Force Hood in the Funny Car division, 25-year-old Brittany Force will start the season as test driver in the BrandSource Top Fuel dragster utilizing the JFR-built Ford BOSS 500 nitro motor that powers the JFR Funny Cars. Later in the season the team will evaluate the three-rail dragster and see what the future holds for Brittany.
In addition to the on-track additions John Force Racing is investing over a million dollar build-up at the Brownsburg, Indiana facility and new personnel for research and development to work with Ford engineers and technicians. Force is currently in negotiations with an additional number of technical experts who could lend their expertise to the JFR team. The new personnel along with much needed and appreciated assistance from Ford Motor Company will continue to keep JFR dominating on the track and building safer race cars and dragsters.
This off-season Force has already bulked his staff by hiring Danny DeGennaro, Dickie Venables and Scott Wible to work with an existing crew chiefs led by the JFR brain-trust of Jimmy Prock, Mike Neff, Dean “Guido” Antonelli, Ron Douglas, and Hall of Famer Bernie Fedderly, who has racing round wins in nitro racing than anyone else in NHRA history.
The on-track lineup includes Neff, who now serves as both driver and crew chief on the Castrol GTX Ford after winning two NHRA championships as crew chief alone; Jimmy Prock, who engineered Hight’s 2009 title; Eric Lane, Prock’s right hand for the last 10 years; and Dean “Guido” Antonelli and Ron Douglas, whose collaboration on Force Hood’s car produced back-to-back victories in the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis.
With Hight working his day job as President of JFR, the company also signed new partnership agreements with Freightliner Trucks and Flow International along with a sponsorship extension with the Auto Club of Southern California, which has served as the primary sponsor on Hight’s Ford since he made his professional driving debut as the NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year in 2005.
Although 2011 was just the fifth season in the last 22 in which a JFR Funny Car driver DID NOT win the championship, it otherwise was a very productive year for the sport’s most successful team. JFR drivers won half the races contested (11 of 22), won the regular season championship and placed two of three drivers in the Top 5 in points.
Nevertheless, Force, who has won at least one tour event in 24 different seasons, an auto racing record, is totally focused on re-claiming the title won last season by Matt Hagan.
“Our primary job is to win championships,” said the 133-time NHRA tour winner, “and when you don’t win you have to look at where you can improve. I’m expanding my ‘brain trust’ with more engineers and new technology. That’s why we brought Danny DeGennaro in and brought Dickie back because he knows how we work. I am also looking for some additional support that will work to just bring us ideas we can implement in testing that will continue to keep us at the top of the sport.”
DeGennaro, who helped Cruz Pedregon to a category-best six No. 1 starts and a third place finish in last year’s Full Throttle Funny Car standings, will work with Antonelli as co-crew chief on Force’s car.
First hired by Jimmy Prock when he was crew chief on Joe Amato’s Top Fuel dragster, the 36-year-old DeGennaro, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., also spent time at Kenny Bernstein Racing where, in 2007, he worked with Jimmy Walsh on the Monster Energy Funny Car.
Venables, whose resume includes stints with some of the top teams in the sport including Joe Gibbs Racing, Don Schumacher Racing and Al Anabi Racing, was co-crew chief in 2003 when Tony Pedregon won the NHRA championship at the wheel of the JFR-owned Castrol SYNTEC Ford.
After leaving JFR the next year, he and Pedregon won a second championship in 2007. He subsequently worked with Del Worsham at Al-Anabi Racing, with Morgan Lucas at GEICO Powersports and last year with Johnny Gray at DSR.
The son of Dick Venables, who drove Top Fuel dragsters for partner Buggs Threadgill in the 1960s, the younger Venables developed his skills working initially with Rahn Tobler on Shirley Muldowney’s championship-winning Top Fuel dragsters. He also worked with Gary Ormsby, Pat Austin, Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, Whit Bazemore and Cory McClenathan.
As a crew chief, Venables has won 19 NHRA tour events, the most recent a 2011 Top Fuel victory with Lucas at the Kragen O’Reilly Winternationals at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, Calif.
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