CONCORD, N.C. — There’s been a lot of publicity surrounding Brittany Force’s new HendrickCars.com sponsorship, announced on Thursday, but little known was the deeper meaning behind it.
Without the four-race sponsorship from longtime NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick and his online brand, Force didn’t have the funds to run the entire NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season.
As surprising as it may seem for the two-time Top Fuel champion and daughter of Funny Car legend John Force, those were the cold, hard facts for Brittany Force when she pulled the trigger on her 12th season of professional competition.
“Brittany, you’re back in business,” John Force exclaimed as the father and daughter sat together in the zMAX Dragway media center in Concord, N.C., on Friday afternoon.
“My job is to keep the funding,” the 16-time Funny Car champion continued. “Now, he (Hendrick) is taking care of Brittany…We’re just really lucky because this was hurting us.”
The younger Force is debuting Hendrick’s traditional colors — white, blue and red — on her 11,000-horsepower, nitro-burning dragster this weekend at the Four-Wide Nationals.
It is the first time the HendrickCars.com logo has been shown off in the Top Fuel category. The brand will also be Force’s primary sponsor at Virginia Motorsports Park in June, once again at zMAX Dragway in the fall and at Texas Motorplex in October.
To say there’s been a lot on Force’s mind lately — between securing funding and chasing down her first Wally since 2022 — would be an understatement.
“There’s so much in the mix, you know, coming out of a tough season,” Force said.
It hasn’t been an easy start to the year either, as four rounds into the season, the 37-year-old has yet to find her way back to the winner’s circle. Her best performance thus far was a semifinal appearance at Firebird Motorsports Park in Chandler, Ariz., three weeks ago.
Part of the holdup has involved a lack of routine, as many of the crew members on Force’s Top Fuel team are new faces. She also has a new co-crew chief, John Collins.
“As a driver, now I have a new guy out front backing me up (in staging). That sounds silly, but it changes everything. It throws everything out of whack,” Force explained. “You have a new guy pulling you into the beams and trying to figure those routines out.”
The David Grubnic-led crew is still working on adjusting their tune-up for the John Force Racing dragster. According to Force, they’re working to make it a combination of their championship-winning setup in 2022 and their experimental tune from 2023.
In the driver’s seat, Force’s sole focus has been her reaction times.
“That’s something I’ve always struggled with and I always will. I have moment when I’m great and then, you know, I’ll fall off for a little while. It’s just (a matter of) figuring out how to turn that back around, stay motivated and push through that,” Force said.
Now having the Hendrick name on her car and feeling the security of a full season being paid for, the light at the end of the tunnel has gotten a little brighter.