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NHRA
NHRA: Funny Car Preview
One major shakeup stole the headlines in the off-season: In late January, John Force announced that his four-car team would be reduced by one.
Kelly Wade  |  Posted February 09, 2010   Porter, TX
Can Ron Capps put himself back atop the Funny Car field in 2010? We're about to find out. (Go2Geiger.com)
The Funny Car field will remain largely intact for 2010, and after a trade of the points lead between four key players over the course of last season and a handful of others nipping at their heals, it could be anybody's game when it comes down to the wire. Defending world champion Robert Hight, along with Ron Capps, Ashley Force Hood, and Tony Pedregon each hope to reclaim the lead they each took a turn holding last season and make it stick, but there are plenty more in the field who are ready to fight for the title.

One major shakeup stole the headlines in the off-season: In late January, Funny Car mainstay John Force announced that his four-car team would be reduced by one, and that the Ford Mustang driven to a No. 10 finish by 2008 rookie of the year Mike Neff would be parked. Bernie Fedderly, crew chief Austin Coil's longtime partner on Force's Castrol GTX High Mileage entry, will downscale his travel but still contribute to the tuning program, and he will take over as special projects manager at the team's facility in Brownsburg, Ind. Neff, who tuned Gary Scelzi to the 2005 world championship, will return to tuning alongside Coil.

Force will pull into Pomona for the season-opening Kragen O'Reilly NHRA Winternationals with an almost entirely new team and a brand new 2010 Mustang with an eye-catching paint scheme celebrating a 25-season partnership with Castrol. Force, who finished ninth last season, will be chasing his 15th world championship.

After struggling all season and scoring the championship with an incredible last minute surge in the Countdown to the Championship, Hight is hoping for a different path ending in with same stellar result.

"In all honesty, I would like to have a lot better year this year leading up to the countdown," Hight said. "We said 'uncle' right at the right time and went back to basics, and this year we'll hopefully stick to the basics and be a car to be reckoned with. It won't be easy."

Force's daughter, Force Hood, is set to expand on her success of last season, when she finished second to brother-in-law and teammate Hight, who claimed his first world championship title. Though the JFR operation has moved shop from Southern California to Brownsburg, much of her crew remains the same and will include a few familiar faces from her father's 2009 crew.

"Neff’s going to be over helping Austin and Bernie with dad’s car, John Medlen will be over with Jimmy (Prock, Hight's crew chief)," Force Hood said. "We’ve been able to keep everybody together, which was our goal. I think that will make our three teams much stronger. It will probably be more entertaining, more opinions, more
everything. But we’re all in there together. The crew chiefs can all work together, and hopefully we'll have three strong, very competitive cars for the 2010 season."

Force Hood will pilot a new 2010 Mustang body just like her dad, as will Hight, and successful testing with the body for the JFR team in Phoenix may have been an early indication of an aerodynamic performance advantage; Force was the standout on the second day of testing with back-to-back 4.11 and 4.10 runs after a pair of 4.11s by Force Hood and Hight capped off the first day.

Making a return to the class this season is Melanie Troxel, who will pilot the In-N-Out Burger Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car at eight national events in the West. Troxel's return to the class could both add depth to the competition and alleviate some of the pressure for Force Hood, who became the first female to win a Funny Car race in NHRA history just a month before Troxel claimed a win of her own in the category that made her the first woman to win in both Top Fuel and Funny Car.

"I think Melanie returning this year is exciting," Force Hood said. "It was a little overwhelming to be the only girl in the category last season. Now there will be a couple of girls in the category for the fans and everyone to cheer on."

The girls will be up against a slew of tough competitors in addition to Force Hood's teammates, including Ford pilots Bob Tasca III and Tim Wilkerson, who will again enter the season with a technical alliance. Both will race with the new Ford Shelby Mustang bodies.

"I think it really worked out well having a two-car alliance," Wilkerson, who finished a career-best second in 2008, said. "I'm really looking forward to doing bigger and better things. Our goal is to be a little closer together, and hopefully we can make decisions that each team will benefit from.



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