The NHRA’s Mello Yello Drag Racing Series’ second visit of the season to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway usually falls on Halloween weekend. And in 2010, Funny Car driver John Force had an unsettling conversation there with a young trick-or-treater.

Force asked the little boy, who was wearing an admiral’s hat, “What are you going to be on Sunday?” The boy replied, “I’m going to be a boat captain,” then he asked Force, “What do you want to be, Mr. Force?”

Force told him, “I want to be the points leader.” Force was chasing Matt Hagan, who had trailed him by 25 points leaving Dallas but had left the Reading, Pa., race with a 64-point advantage.

The boy asked, “What are you going to dress up like, Hagan?”

“Kind of aggravated me. Kid was so sharp. Kids know what’s going on. They tell the truth, you know what I mean?” Force said after taking the lead and the 15^th of his 16 Funny Car championships, edging Hagan by 42 points.

The truth is that Force has found himself heading into Las Vegas again having lost his points lead to Hagan at Reading. In between that 2010 season-ending coup for Force and today, Hagan won the 2011 championship then finished second to Force in 2013. No matter which way the momentum breaks this time, it’s an inescapable fact that the careers of Force and Hagan have become entwined.

But for Force, Hagan is a much different kind of rival than he is used to. Just as Force has had to get used to new technology, life post-Austin Coil, another desperate fight for funding, and a family dynamic that includes a revolving door of daughters in various race cars, he has had to figure out how to solve a rival such as Hagan.

The Angus cattle farmer from Christiansburg, Va., poses a whole different kind of competitor, one Force simply isn’t used to.

Force has worked himself into a froth through the years as he has battled Cruz Pedregon, the one who in 1992 interrupted his streak of championships between 1990 and 2002. Force was agonizing about points during the Western Swing that season, even having his young daughters calculate various race-result scenarios as they rode in the back seat of the family sedan between Sonoma and Seattle during a trip that was supposed to be a family vacation. He bought Ashley, Brittany, and Courtney Happy Meals at McDonald’s and was furious to find them merrily chatting about their Happy Meal treats – which, unbeknownst to him, were plastic miniature versions of the Cruz Pedregon McDonald’s Funny Car.

He pulled to the side of the road, grabbed one of the toys, bolted from the car, threw the toy to the ground, and pulverized the plastic Pedregon with his foot. Wife Laurie was disgusted, and the crying children in the back seat were scared. Snapping back to reality, Force said, “I was in Vietnam in my head.”

Force really never knew how to react to Al Hofmann, the immensely talented but flinty, scowling, growling Funny Car privateer who never could seem to catch up with Force in spending, expanding, and winning. He barked constantly that “Force cheats” or “I think he’s an idiot. He’s just a dumb truck driver with too much money.” Another verbal grenade was that he wished he had met Force’s mother “so I could have talked her out of having him.” Force loved Elvis Presley, but Hofmann always had to step on the blue suede shoes. When he eliminated Force in 1998 at Memphis, Hofmann said, “Maybe Force will believe me now. Elvis is dead.” However, later, after he retired, Hofmann would phone Robert Hight, Force’s son-in-law, to encourage him and convey that he was cheering for him and Force. “Poor Al, I can’t figure him out. I’ve just got to love him,” Force said, although privately he teetered on the edge of fear when it came to Hofmann.

But Hagan, that strong ol’ country boy who drives cattle and showed right away that he could drive a Funny Car even more forcefully, is another matter.

Unlike Force, Hagan doesn’t say much. “I’m a big-mouthed guy. He’s not. He’s very quiet,” Force said. “You got to watch that guy that’s quiet, because while you’re talking, he’s thinking.”

So for Force, “fighting the fight” would require a different strategy. And that perplexed Force at first. Maybe it still does.

“I can’t go out and arm-wrestle with Hagan. I can’t get in a fistfight with Hagan. And you don’t intimidate a cowboy,” Force said during their 2010 battle. So Force did what he knew best: he studied Hagan, just like he would learn about human behavior by watching movies at the theatre – sometimes by himself, sometimes over and over, sometimes with his team as they watched the film and he watched them.

“I’ve studied him on the farm,” Force said of Hagan. “I’ve met his lovely wife [Rachel], a little gal that plays piano. I’m starting to understand where he comes from. So I’ve got a competitor here that I’ve got to keep my nose clean, do what I do, and take every opportunity.”

Back then, when Hagan weighed a little more, Force – who has been known to shave weight from his own car by removing decals – was aggravated that Hagan outweighed him but was quicker on the track. Said Force, “I just can’t figure it out. This kid’s big enough to run fullback for the Green Bay Packers.” Since Hagan chiseled himself to his six-foot, 197-pound form that Force constantly calls “The Hulk,” Force has admired not only Hagan’s physique but also his work ethic.

When Force defeated Hagan in a showdown at the 2014 season-opening Winternationals at Pomona, Calif., avenging his loss in the finals there last November, Force said, “We all know Hagan has turned into a bodybuilder. He’s beautiful. I work out hard, and I’m not even close. He even flexed his muscles in a photo I saw in the paper – wow!” After Hagan congratulated him at the end of the track with a hug and walked off, Force quipped, “Damn, I like that kid. I ought to kiss him.”

But even he bristled at a question ESPN’s Gary Gerould asked him: What do you feel like, racing a guy like him, when he’s built like that? Force found his combative spark: “Well, what the hell’s that have to do with anything?! He looks great, but this ain’t a beauty contest or WWE, where we get in the ring. But I thought about it. Man, when you’re young and you’ve got that fire and that strength and that energy . . . and I went and took off my firesuit in my trailer, and it scared me. When you’re 64 years old and they put you in a firesuit, you’re 24. You’re Superman. That’s a fact. Just something happens.

“That kid, he’s a hulk, and that’s why I love him,” Force said, “But [Castrol GTX Ford Mustang crew chief] Jimmy Prock just flexed his muscles.”

And so the 64-year-old Superman once again this fall is fighting for truth, justice, and the John Force Way against another focused fellow who hopes to have another title under his rodeo-style belt two days before his 32^nd birthday next month.

Who knew the two of them – the dean of the Funny Cars, maybe even of the NHRA, and the seventh-year student – would be on a collision course again, come the fall Las Vegas and Pomona races?

Hagan did. Perhaps they both did. But Hagan knows the fierce rivalry his boss, Don Schumacher, has with Force. He knows that cliché – “To be the best you have to beat the best” – is a cliché for a reason. That makes it inevitable that he would have to bulldoze Force from his path like he would some bramble patch on his 500-acre property in the hills of southwestern Virginia’s New River Valley.

“After his 2010 collapse against Force, Hagan said, “When I had that bad taste in my mouth, I told myself I don’t ever want this again. I’ll do everything in my power to keep from that. Sometimes it’s out of your control and you just have to live with it.  But if I have anything to do with it, that’s the way I want it to come out.”

Force has money-chasing, overseeing three Funny Car teams and one Top Fuel team, managing two facilities 2,000 miles apart, worrying about the families he is supporting through his organization, and entertaining at personal appearances in a seemingly endless tornado of tasks, Hagan has his wife and young children Colby and Penny, his farm, and his Matt Hagan Outdoors retail store at Radford, Va., to keep him occupied away from the racetrack. Hagan’s life is far less stressful. He’s happy to escape from the chaotic, high-stakes, gossip-riddled world of NHRA drag racing. It still isn’t lost on him, though, that battling against Force always will require the same energy it takes to manhandle any one of his 300 head of 700-pound feeder calves.

“The farm is my release. It’s kind of my way to let go of what happens on the track. Don’t get me wrong, I still think about the races and what I could do differently. Even when you do everything right you still want to do more,” Hagan said. “What I do out here is definitely strong back – weak mind kind of stuff. So I don’t have to think a lot about it. It just works for me.”