John Force might not have pinpointed the problem with his Peak Chevy Camaro Funny Car that has exploded at each of the first three NHRA races this year. He can tell more what it isn’t than what it is.

Compounding his headaches – and damaging his budget – are Top Fuel champion daughter Brittany’s nasty wreck on her first elimination run of the season and teammate Robert Hight’s body-blowing spectacle at the most recent race, at Gainesville, Fla.

With four-wide races at Las Vegas and Charlotte in three April races, the stakes are higher. However, Force is confident, putting his faith in his “brain trust” and reassuring that “I am not brain dead, unless I knocked my brain apart.”

Oh — and don’t even think he’s considering retirement.

It seems just when Force and his crew have started to assess what’s causing his engine explosions, another one happens or another JFR car experiences another catastrophe. And so it has gone for Force, who estimated the damage was around $1 million. That was before Hight’s boomer in the second round of the Gatornationals (almost in tandem with opponent Matt Hagan as they crossed the finish line on fire and chunks and slivers of the missing car bodies still stabbing the air on their way back to the ground).

I am not brain dead, unless I knocked my brain apart.” – John Force

Force even said after his own third incident, “I adjusted seatbelts and restraints … so my hands couldn’t get out of the car. Did everything right. And there’s only one person to talk to, and that’s God … [to ask] if I have done something wrong in life, ‘cause I have done something wrong.”

Presumably past his come-to-Jesus meeting, with new life ready to dawn on the racetrack in the wake of Easter, Force said he was hoping testing would exorcise whatever is possessing his Camaro.

“We’ve got a demon in there we can’t seem to sort out,” he said following his qualifying explosion at Gainesville that left him with a bandaged right hand. “I thought we were onto it two days ago, and it blew the body off again. We stopped one problem. Now we’re looking at maybe that wasn’t the whole problem.”

After the explosion during eliminations at Phoenix, which knocked him unconscious and caused his car to collide with opponent Jonnie Lindberg’s, Force said, “Without a doubt we have a gremlin in our cockpit. We have been pulling main studs and we are looking at the bolts. We are looking at the studs and how we cap them.”

Further examination convinced the team that the problem doesn’t lie with the main studs. The issue, they determined, was with the threads in the engine block.

“We build our own engines, but a lot of racers are having the same problem it just seems to be biting me the worst,” Force, who said, “Some years you just get snake-bit. It is not like things have just gone wrong. I don’t believe in that.”

He said on that Phoenix pass the car dropped a cylinder on the launch, leaving him not at full power for the entire run. He said when that happens, “the car usually moves around and tells you something is wrong. But it didn’t move around. It went straight as an arrow, and it didn’t talk to me.” So it didn’t send out the distress signals he’s used to when a car is misbehaving.

Maybe we’re going to have to start driving these things a little different on race day. Maybe we’re just putting too much stuff in ‘em and they can’t take that anymore. – Robert Hight

Even Austin Coil, his longtime leaning post who left the team a few years ago, has been on the phone, consulting with the crew. Crew chiefs Jon Schaffer and Jason McCulloch have been obsessed with getting the car back to normal.

“We’ll get it fixed. You stick by your people. You know who you got that are good, and you just keep working,” Force said, crediting Jimmy Prock from Hight’s team and Brian Corradi and Dan Hood from Courtney Force’s team as contributing to the solution. “We got hit in [preseason] testing, and we starting fixing something over here and you change your tune-up to fix that and you go through a process and you get lost. I am banking on the experience of the people around me.”

Hight said Sunday morning at Gainesville that “everybody put their heads together. We have some smart people. When you see the things that are happening to John’s car, it’s not the same every time. It could happen to our car.”

Within about two and a half hours, it did.

And Hight said after his own massive engine concussion that day, “Unfortunately, it’s a different thing every time. Courtney and I haven’t had the same things John has. Mine just started to slip – and it wasn’t spinnin’ hard, revvin’ up, nothin’ like that.

“Maybe we’re going to have to start driving these things a little different on race day. Maybe we’re just putting too much stuff in ‘em and they can’t take that anymore,” Hight said.

What that means and how a four-wide race would alter that set-up or strategy is something that’s not for sharing.

But if he continues to have trouble, Force will keep trying to solve the mystery. It will drive him mad if he doesn’t.

“I can’t run this car,” he said at the Gatornationals. “It ain’t because of money. I’ve got plenty of money. It’s because you can’t run a car to where it blows the body off. It ain’t about money to me. I’ll spend every penny I got. I’ll hock my house. What I’m sayin’ is it’s about safety for myself and the other driver I’m racing against. I owe those kids that, to protect them. And that’s why I do this.

“So right now, I’m having to play with it. We’re having to go certain directions,” he said. “They’ve [the crew has] taken control away from me. They know I’m crazy. They know I’ll drive it until it blows up again. But I won’t. I know I make those theatrical statements and I make a bunch of drivers mad at me – and I apologized. I want to be safe, and I want my car safe. We’re going through a process.”

That process is multifaceted. John Force and Robert Hight are veterans at this sport. Brittany Force is beginning just her sixth year in the pro ranks and quickly learning that drag racing is no respecter of champions. And that emotional toll her accident has taken on her has transferred to her dad.

As the Phoenix race loomed and Brittany Force debated about how to approach her return, John said, “I felt like I was going to puke. That is a terrible word. But you know, that’s my baby girl. You worry about what all is going through her head. I know the drill and I have been through it all. I have had all the nights laying there where you can’t sleep because the next day I have to race. I know how it all works because I have lived it. She doesn’t know that, so I know the gut-ache of getting back in the car of qualifying was tough. The crash was tough, but it was not as tough as getting back in that race car. That is the hard part. Me, I know how to turn off the switch and do it. I know she struggled with it. What made me so proud was she did it. She got back in the car and did it.

“I have to give Don Schumacher Racing credit for building that canopy,” John Force said. “We’re drag racers. We don’t want to get hurt. We are in the entertainment business. We are P.T. Barnum at over 300 miles per hour, and it is pretty amazing, the show that we put on. This isn’t the kind of show we like to put on. We like to put on a show where it is side-by-side racing. Sometimes drama plays into it but nothing like the police department or fire department and certainly not the people in the military. They live it day to day. Bottom line, we are just racecar drivers and we love it. That is what we do, and we love to entertain you.”

They’ve [the crew has] taken control away from me. They know I’m crazy. They know I’ll drive it until it blows up again. But I won’t. – John Force

What’s ahead no one knows. Will everyone be entertained? Shocked? Scared? Or will the two four-wide races and the Houston event in between go off without a hitch and all this commotion settle down?

Whatever happens, John Force is adamant he won’t retire.

“Why would I do that? I am learning how to do this finally. I have been struggling with some things and the financial cost, but Monster is with us, Advance Auto Parts, Auto Club  … and Peak gave me a lifetime contract. Right now, I have to get my ol’ race car back on the racetrack, but we have to analyze it first. It has been a little bit of overload with Brittany. To retire and tell Brittany, who just went through hell in Pomona and then mentally went through hell to get back in the car, which is worse than the crash, to go out there with Alan Johnson, Brian Husen and that Monster Energy team, and step back on the gas, that is the tough one. To tell her I am not going to come back, we might as well not even have this conversation. I told you they will drag me out kicking at the end.”