Englishtown: John Force Racing final summary

Densham Wins For Team Castrol

Gary Densham beat his boss, John Force, in an all-Castrol Funny Car final as the Team Castrol Fords dominated the 35th annual K&N Filters SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.

In winning the East Coast's biggest race for the second time in three years, Densham won the final with an almost pedestrian time of 5.004 seconds after his Team Castrol/Automobile Club of Southern California Ford and Force's Castrol GTX Start Up Ford lost traction on a hot racetrack.

Although Densham was able to recover quickly enough to get to the finish line ahead of his teammate, it was a costly victory in that the former high school auto shop teacher couldn't get his car stopped after the parachutes failed to properly deploy. That sent him off the end of the track and into the sand pit and catch net.

"It was embarrassing as much as anything else," Densham said, "but I hate it for my guys. They do such a great job and the last thing I wanted to do was make more work for them. It was a great weekend for Castrol, right here in their backyard. John and I got to the final and Eric (Medlen) was the No. 1 qualifier. It doesn't get any better than that."

It was Densham's seventh career victory but just his first this season and it moved him around Medlen and into fourth place in points.

Force, meanwhile, reached the finals for the 172nd time in his career and closed to within 42 points of Del Worsham in the POWERade point stanindgs.

TEAM CASTROL Details:

JOHN FORCE, 55, Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang Funny Car
Qualifying position and performance: 7th at 4.937 seconds, 311.56 mph.
Race results: Beat Jeff Arend, Tony Pedregon, Gary Scelzi; lost to Gary Densham.
Notable: Extended qualifying record to 334 consecutive events and moved to within 42 points of first place.

Quotable: "It was a great weekend for us here in Castrol's hometown. Eric was on the pole and Densh and I had a heckuva a race in the finals. Bottom line, all three of our Castrol Fords are in race for the championship." - JOHN FORCE.

ERIC MEDLEN, 30, Castrol SYNTEC Ford Mustang
Qualifying position and performance: 1st at 4.830 seconds, 317.72 mph.
Race results: Lost to Tommy Johnson Jr.
Notable: Earned first No. 1 qualifying award of his career by putting the Castrol SYNTEC entry on the pole for the sixth time in nine years at Raceway Park.

Quotable: "Well, it was great being No. 1 but that's just part of the job. We didn't get the rest of it done. I'm just glad we've got another race coming up." - ERIC MEDLEN.

GARY DENSHAM, 57, Team Castrol/Auto Club of Southern California Ford Mustang Funny Car
Qualifying position and performance: 4th at 4.890 seconds, 317.49 mph.
Race results: Beat Bob Gilbertson, Tim Wilkerson, Del Worsham and John Force.
Notable: Won for the first time this season, for the seventh time in his career and for the second time in three years at Raceway Park.

Quotable: "I thought we should have won already this year. We've had a really fast car but we lost a lot of races running 4.70s. So to come out here today and win running 4.90, that was special." - GARY DENSHAM.

-jfr-