NHRA

Neff - Ford interview 20090-02-18

This Week in Ford Racing Now in his second season with John Force Racing, Mike Neff won the 2008 NHRA Rookie of the Year and made the Countdown to 1 finishing ninth in the final standings. Neff, who was the Crew Chief on Gary Scelzi's ...

Published: Jun 19, 2009, 7:36 PM

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This Week in Ford Racing

Now in his second season with John Force Racing, Mike Neff won the 2008 NHRA Rookie of the Year and made the Countdown to 1 finishing ninth in the final standings. Neff, who was the Crew Chief on Gary Scelzi's 2005 championship winning Funny Car, retired as a crew chief in 2007 and joined John Force Racing as the team's fourth driver. Neff went to three final rounds in 2008 and twice was the top qualifier. Neff who has been instrumental in the development of the Ford BOSS 500 engine is looking for his first career Funny Car win as a driver.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS HEADING INTO THIS WEEKEND ON THE SECOND STOP OF THE SEASON? " Well, looking at the weather, it looks good, so that will definitely be a nice change. Pomona was sure a long weekend standing around in the rain for five days, so I'm more excited. We tested there, so we have some things to go back and look at as far as our set up and we made a couple of good runs there, so we feel good about going there and having some sort of a baseline that we can get started with."

YOU HAVE BEEN THE LEADER ON THE BOSS 500 DEVELOPMENT BEGINNING LAST YEAR. CAN YOU BRING US UP TO SPEED ON THE BOSS 500 AND DO YOU SEE THE FIRST WIN FOR THE BOSS 500 COMING SOON? "Yeah, I definitely do. I have been involved in a lot of experimental projects and I haven't seen one go as smooth as the Ford OSS500 project. John Medlen, and the whole John Force Racing team along with the Ford Racing have been working on the project for a few years before it hit the track full-time last year. I was actually driving when we first put it [BOSS 500 engine] in the Mustang for the very first run. It was testing in '07 at Las Vegas. We put it in, ran it like 300 feet, came back and looked at it. Everything looked good and it's just been no problem whatsoever. It also gives us some more horsepower; when we put it in, the engine revved up another 150 rpm higher right out of the get go. That's been a good thing for us, and now it's in John Force's car. He was running it last year, probably the last half of last year and now our inventory is growing to where here soon the other two Force Mustangs, Robert and Ashley will have it in there. It has bee just about a flawless project. We've had to make a couple little changes, a little something here or there but for the most part the Ford BOSS 500 been a real successful project."

-credit: ford racing

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