John Force is refusing to say one way or another if he intentionally lost that now famous Monday round at the 2009 US Nationals to his teammate (and son-in-law) Robert Hight. RacinToday.com wrote a great piece on the whole incident, including quotes from Force that sound like he’s tap dancing on a land mine. Lots of his comments appear to point toward a swan dive.
As we said in our original reporting on the incident, in our opinion, he totally drove the car out of the groove, which caused it to break loose, making Force lift. If Robert Hight lost that round, he would not have made the vaunted, “Countdown to One” and ultimately he would not have been the NHRA Funny Car champ in 2009. Force makes more than a couple of statements in this story which seem to back up our belief that he drove the car out of the groove on purpose. He even says that he’ll never admit or say one way or the other if he did it intentionally or not.
While we can certainly understand the uproar about “throwing” a race, you really have to be naive to believe that this type of stuff doesn’t happen in all forms of racing these days. Hell, Nelson Piquet Jr. was ordered to crash his freaking car on purpose by the Renault F1 team. In those terms, this is amateur level stuff.
Does this incident tarnish John Force’s image as one the best Funny Car drivers of all time? If you are a hard line fan, we bet it does. For us it makes guys like Garlits and Prudhomme seem even more special and in a completely different league, even from Force. We’re fairly certain neither of them would have done the same thing.
Source — RacinToday.com — Force Still Pleading Fifth On Taking Indy Dive
