John Force is Coming to North Carolina!

[DebWilliams-GFN]

John Force Coming to North Carolina

By Deb Williams

CONCORD, N.C. (May 25, 2008) – Fourteen-time NHRA Funny Car world champion John Force said Sunday he thought when the zMAX Dragway at Concord opens in September, NHRA teams will look at relocating to the Charlotte area.

“They want a facility where they can test,” Force said. “There are two key situations here. Indy was good, even Dallas I had considered, because it was in the center of the country and you could get everywhere in a short period of time. But the real key, I think, to Charlotte is corporate America is parked here and we're always chasing money. When you come down here, I think it's going to help us.

“Let's face it. NASCAR has done what they had to do, and they've moved way up the ladder. We'd like to chase that. We may never catch them, but we always like that dream of fighting that fight.”

Force said he planned to look at moving his operation to North Carolina.

“If you park where all the money is, a little might rub off on you,” Force said. “There are some NASCAR drivers coming up and looking at buying teams in NHRA.”

The inaugural NHRA event at the Concord track is scheduled for Sept. 11-14. It also is the first in the NHRA Countdown to the Championship six-race series.
Track officials announced Sunday the entire quarter-mile surface will be concrete and it will be four lanes.

“It's real important for our sanctioning body as a whole, because concrete is so much more dense,” Top Fuel driver Antron Brown said. “We try to apply 7,000 horsepower to the ground; you need a surface like that to withstand the speeds that we go. On tracks that have concrete and asphalt, there is always a transition. Asphalt and concrete remain at different temperatures. When we go to an all-concrete facility, that's when you are going to see records set, some records broken.”

With the four-lane drag strip, there is a possibility that two lanes will be assigned to the nitro cars and the other two to Pro Stock, Pro Stock Motorcycles, and the Lucas Oil Series.

“We'll have to see what NHRA does if we do get to run all four lanes,” said Matt Smith, the defending NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle champion from King N.C.

“From what we've heard, it might be Pro Stock and Pro Stock Bike on one side and Top Fuel and Funny Car on the other. The Top Fuel and Funny Cars like a lot of glue out there so they can really get after it. The cars and the bikes, we cannot have that much on the first 60 to 100 feet because it will shake our tires and then we're not fast. It will be interesting to see what they do.”

Speedway Motorsports Inc. Chairman and CEO Bruton Smith recently said construction of the facility was ahead of schedule and he expected it to be completed by Aug. 1.