NHRA

St. Louis: Ashley Force Hood preview

Ashley Aims for No. 1 at Midwest Nationals; Champ's Daughter Chasing Full Throttle Points Lead MADISON, Ill. -- Ashley Force Hood is blazing hot -- and we're not talking just in a "World's Hottest Athlete" kind of way. The 26-year-old daughter ...

Published: Jun 19, 2009, 7:52 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Ashley Aims for No. 1 at Midwest Nationals; Champ's Daughter Chasing Full Throttle Points Lead

MADISON, Ill. -- Ashley Force Hood is blazing hot -- and we're not talking just in a "World's Hottest Athlete" kind of way. The 26-year-old daughter of drag racing icon John Force, who two years ago won AOL sports' "World's Hottest Athlete" poll, suddenly isn't just a novelty on the NHRA Full Throttle tour. She's a real threat.

Having already become the first woman in 40 years to reach an NHRA Funny Car final, the first to win a race, the first to lead the points and the first to finish in the Top 10, she returns this week to Gateway International Raceway focused on adding the 13thannual O'Reilly Auto Parts Midwest Nationals to her expanding resume.

Six races into the 2009 season, the graduate of Cal State-Fullerton is the only member of the John Force Racing consortium to have won a race, the only one to have appeared in multiple finals, the only one within real striking distance of points leader Ron Capps, whom she trails by 70 points.

Furthermore, she is coming off a performance two weeks ago at Atlanta, Ga., that conjured up vivid images of her dad back when he was dominating the series.

Driving a Ford Mustang decked out in the familiar Castrol GTX0x00ae green-and-white her father made famous, she qualified No. 1, posted the quickest time in each of the first three rounds and registered the three fastest speeds in 1,000-foot racing history: 310.48 miles per hour, 311.41 mph and 312.13 mph.

The only thing that kept her out of the winners' circle was what she characterized as "driver error" against the man who taught her the skills that have made her a contender: "Fast Jack" Beckman, an instructor at Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School.

On her way to another likely sub-4.10 elapsed time, the 2007 NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year became briefly disoriented and, unsure of her track position, did what she was trained to do. She got off the gas, allowing Beckman to race by for a narrow win that denied her a second straight Atlanta victory.

"I just got lost and couldn't figure out where I was on the track," she said. "My dad tried to make me feel better. He said if you don't know where you are, you should lift, but I was upset that my team gave me such an amazing car and I couldn't (get it to the winners' circle)."

It is that "amazing" race car that Ashley brings to Gateway. Although Capps has won three of the season's first six races, it's difficult to believe that his is a better race car than Ashley's Castrol GTX Ford.

After all, in addition to a victory at Houston, the new face of high performance has been a serious contender at every race this year, losing five times by a combined total of .086 of a second. The only race she knew she lost without a clue from her crew was the Atlanta final, which Beckman won by a whopping .068 of a second.

"Our team has always believed that consistency is the key," Ashley said. "We have always had a real consistent car. Maybe we haven't had the fastest car, but recently we have been able to maintain our consistency but take (the performance) up a notch. Guido' and Ron (crew chiefs Dean Antonelli and Ron Douglas) really have a good handle on it.

"Atlanta's behind us now and we're really excited about getting our car to St. Louis and doing it again -- only better."

-credit: jfr

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article St. Louis: Jeff Arned preview

Next article St. Louis: Doug Kalitta preview

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Zane Smith fined $50,000 by NASCAR for ramming Carson Hocevar after Phoenix Cup race

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Phoenix II

1 h

Zane Smith fined $50,000 by NASCAR for ramming Carson Hocevar after Phoenix Cup race

FIA expects F1 races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi to continue as planned

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

United States GP

5 h

FIA expects F1 races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi to continue as planned

TDS Racing doubles down on IMSA program with two-car LMP2 return

IMSA

IMSA IMSA 5 h

TDS Racing doubles down on IMSA program with two-car LMP2 return

Why Isack Hadjar doesn’t like F1 sprints anymore

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

6 h

Why Isack Hadjar doesn’t like F1 sprints anymore

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts