{"id":103487,"date":"2025-11-14T11:16:23","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=103487"},"modified":"2025-11-14T11:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:16:23","slug":"john-force-announces-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/john-force-announces-retirement\/","title":{"rendered":"John Force Announces Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
John Force at the 2025 Winternationals – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There will never be another John Force. The legendary NHRA Funny Car driver, who owns 16 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series championships, 157 race wins, 166 No. 1 qualifiers and 1,460 round victories in eliminations more than 50 years has made it official: 17 months after his devastating crash on the Virginia Motorsports Park dragstrip outside Richmond, Virginia, he\u2019s hanging up his helmet for good.<\/p>\n

Force had been talking about his impending retirement even before last year\u2019s horrific accident during eliminations in Virginia. When he tied Ed \u201cAce\u201d McCulloch for five wins in the most prestigious race of each season, the Cornwell Quality Tools U.S. Nationals in 2019, Force first publicly discussed the fact that his career wasn\u2019t going to last forever. At that time, he said he\u2019d know, and yesterday, November 13th, he made it official.<\/p>\n

Force made his first appearance after the crash, from which he\u2019s still recovering physically, at the Las Vegas race last fall; he\u2019s come to most of the events since that time to render support for his John Force Racing team that includes retiring Brittany Force, a two-time Top Fuel champion, reigning Funny Car champion Austin Prock, attempting a second consecutive title this weekend during the 60th annual In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals on the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, and 2012 Funny Car champion Jack Beckman, who assumed Force\u2019s seat in the PEAK Antifreeze and Coolant Chevrolet SS at Brainerd last August.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI really love NHRA,\u201d Force said in making his announcement, \u201cbut I am officially done with driving. I\u2019ve said, so many times, \u2018Until this race car kills me, they\u2019re gonna have to drag me out of the seat.\u2019 but the truth is,\u201d he recognized, \u201cI was dragged out of the seat at Richmond and they thought it killed me then. So I\u2019m lucky that I\u2019m back walking. They always say, \u2018never say never,\u2019 but I have grandchildren with Courtney and Graham, with Ashley and Danny, and now Brittany\u2019s retired because she wants to have children.<\/p>\n

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John Force at the 2024 Winternationals – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time for me to retire. I had medical stuff that I had to address, and \u2018do I want to get back in the car and get hit on the head\u2019, and I don\u2019t. So I guess it\u2019s official,\u201d Force conceded, \u201cI\u2019m done. I won\u2019t say I won\u2019t ever get in a car to warm it up or maybe even make a burnout. Don\u2019t know. I guess it\u2019ll be the response from the fans. If they cheer loud enough, I\u2019ll hear ya.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Force Racing, the 23-time championship-winning organization he founded in Yorba Linda, site of his retirement announcement, and which currently operates in Brownsburg, IN will continue to enjoy Force\u2019s expertise. Still, 2026 marks – not only NHRA\u2019s 75th anniversary season – but the first time since the early 1970s that there won\u2019t be a driver with the surname Force in NHRA nitro competition. It won\u2019t be the same.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After 16 NHRA Drag Racing Series championships, 157 race wins, 166 No. 1 qualifiers and 1,460 round victories in eliminations, John Force is finally calling it quits.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":103489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470],"tags":[4012,424,77,38,5850,10015,9631,75,423,9966,7,73,509],"class_list":["post-103487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","tag-ashley-force-hood","tag-brittany-force","tag-courtney-force","tag-funny-car","tag-graham-rahal","tag-in-n-out-burger-nhra-finals","tag-in-n-out-burger-pomona-dragstrip","tag-john-force","tag-john-force-racing","tag-mission-foods-drag-racing-series","tag-nhra","tag-top-fuel","tag-winternationals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Force-mug-Pomona1-2025-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-qV9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103493,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103487\/revisions\/103493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}