Saturday was a true shake down day for John Force Racing. The goal of the day was to knock the rust off the teams and begin to put the pieces together to win an unprecedented 17th team Full Throttle Funny Car world championship.
2009 Funny Car champion Robert Hight’s Auto Club Mustang made two passes with the final lap of the day covering the race track in 4.11 seconds at 302.21 mph. Not to be outdone Ashley Force Hood’s Castrol GTX Mustang followed in his tracks recording a 4.11 at 302.75 mph on her second pass. Team leader John Force only made one run on Saturday but it was JFR’s first full pass when the 14-time champ clicked it early and tripped the lights at 4.19 seconds and a diminished 242.06 mph.
“I was a little rusty and I definitely used up a lot of race track. NHRA and Firebird have done a great job with setting up the track. Last year it took us seven or eight runs per team before we got down the race track. On our second try today we went down the track so today was a good way to start. Our biggest deal right now is we want to get it past half track and try to lock the clutch up. That is the biggest thing we are testing right now is our clutch pack. We want a smooth lock up and have it run real quick. We don’t learn that by shutting off at the 330 ft. mark,” said Hight.
“One thing that we have changed from previous years is we are not changing a lot of other things. We are changing what we have to. We spent a lot of time this winter on the dyno and we have a pretty good idea what our clutch disks will do but you don’t know until you put them on together. That is what we are testing now,” add Hight.
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