If you’re Courtney Force, you’ve got to be wondering what it was going to take to win something at the NHRA New England Nationals over the weekend. The driver of the Advance Auto Parts Funny Car qualified second in the field, was runner-up Matt Hagan in Sunday’s final round, and despite enduring the grandest engine explosion of her nitro career, played second fiddle to Terry McMillen on the weekend highlight reel.
During Friday’s opening round of qualifying at the New England Dragway in Epping, New Hampshire, the 28-year old marched to the quickest run of the session with a 3.84 at 331 mph when, right in the lights, the nitro-burning Hemi let go in spectacular fashion, shredding the Chevrolet Camaro body from the center-out and lifting the chassis off the racing surface.
“It was definitely interesting,” Force said. “We had a huge explosion which was a first for me, and even more crazy at 330 mph. But I’m just glad I made it out OK and we made a killer run. We had a fuel line burst, which caused the problem. That’s racing. It’s always the little things. But luckily we held on to the top spot.”
With the chassis damaged from the explosion and resulting contact with the guardrail, Force’s team prepared her backup car for the afternoon’s second session, but her woes continued as a brake issue on the burnout caused the car to nudge into the guardrail, forcing her to abort the run.
“My guys were thrashing and got the new Advance Auto Parts Chevrolet Camaro ready to go for the second session. We got it out there, did the burnout, things were going well, and our front right brake locked up and sent me over to the wall. Nothing was responding at that point. My dad told me right before the run that in 40 years he had never had two incidents in which he hit the wall twice in a row, and not to worry and go into the run confident. I was going in confident. We planned to make a half pass just to make sure things were going good. I’m glad it happened in the burnout and not at the end of the race track, because that could have been bad.”