![\"Courtney](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/185-CourtneyForce-Sunday-Richmond-min.jpg\")
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The key to gaining Wally trophies and national championships in NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competition is to be consistently fast. There\u2019s one driver who\u2019s doing so more than any other, edging toward the halfway point in NHRA\u2019s 24-race 2018 campaign.<\/p>\n
That would be Courtney Force, 16-time Funny Car champion John Force\u2019s youngest daughter. Last year she finished third overall in Funny Car standings despite not winning a single race. Courtney Force was able to race consistently throughout that season but unable to close the deal, as was the case for her older sister Brittany, who is the reigning Top Fuel champion, and brother-in-law Robert Hight, who secured his second Funny Car title in the season\u2019s final race.<\/p>\n
This year that\u2019s changed. It remains to be seen whether Courtney Force can continue to overpower her competition and secure her first NHRA Funny Car world title, but she, together with crew chiefs Daniel Hood and Brian Corradi, are working towards that conclusion at Pomona in November.<\/p>\n
This past weekend at race No. 10 in Dinwiddie, Virginia, Force showed her competitors she\u2019s the 2018 boss of the flopper class, earning the No. 1 qualifier and taking her fourth Wally national trophy of the still-young season. She ran low ET of the meeting for her class along with top speed en route to winning the race – and vanquishing her dad in the finals.<\/p>\n
![\"Courtney](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/186-CourtneyForce-Celeb-Sunday-Richmond-min.jpg\")
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Force earned plenty of \u201clittle points\u201d in the process, being quickest in three sessions (1st, 2nd and 4th) and third-quickest in the third qualifying round. In Sunday\u2019s eliminations, Force beat Jeff Diehl, Jim Campbell and J.R. Todd before taking on her father in the final round. \u201cIt was exciting to be in an all-Force final and to see that PEAK team (of her father) do so well,\u201d Courtney Force said. \u201cBrian Corradi and Danny Hood have done a great job with this team and race car. We have been so consistent – but we stumbled a little in the first round – and got away with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Force has some great memories of Virginia Motorsports Park (VMP), site of this weekend\u2019s Virginia Nationals, where John Force has four victories (and nearly a fifth). It\u2019s been a decade since the series raced at this track, and Courtney remembers that for her seventh birthday, all she wanted was to go to a race with her dad. It happened to be at VMP: \u201cWe got to celebrate in the winner\u2019s circle and I was wearing a \u2018Virginia is for Lovers\u2019 t-shirt. I am excited to wear that shirt in the winner\u2019s circle today for my win,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was surreal to come to this very track with him again and race him in the final round. That was pretty cool. I don\u2019t think I could have written a better story. I was going to be excited whether he got the win or I did. There were so many fans here it was amazing.\u201d The victory marks Courtney Force\u2019s 12th during her seven-year professional career; each of her 2018 Wally trophies has been earned from the No. 1 qualifier position, but she\u2019s thinking of the length of this campaign and looking forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is just the beginning of the season and we have to maintain our focus. So much credit goes to my team and the job they have done – I\u2019m trying to keep up with them and perform well as a driver. Our focus is getting to Indy and having a cushion, locking into the Countdown (to the Championship, a six-race playoff series for the top 10 that closes each season and decides each champion). Right now it is great, but we really have to keep it all season long if we want to end up on top at the end of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
No rest for NHRA teams as they head to Bristol, Tenn. for the Fitzgerald USA Thunder Valley Nationals at Bristol Dragway. Can Courtney Force keep her team\u2019s momentum going?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The key to gaining Wally trophies and national championships in NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series competition is to be consistently fast. This season, there\u2019s one driver who\u2019s doing so more than any other.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":52474,"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":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,77,3317,41,7,1632,73],"class_list":["post-52473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-courtney-force","tag-mello-yello","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-top-fuel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/185-CourtneyForce-Sunday-Richmond-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-dEl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52473","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=52473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52476,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52473\/revisions\/52476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}