On a track on which her dad won nine times in his spectacular Funny Car career, two-time World Champion Brittany Force tries to start a streak of her own this week when she sends her HendrickCars.com Chevrolet after the Top Fuel championship in the 36th NHRA Northwest Nationals at Pacific Raceways.
“(I’m) excited to be back in the HendrickCars.com colors this weekend,” said the 18-time tour winner and only woman to have won as many as 300 racing rounds in drag racing’s signature category. “I’ve been coming to this track since I was a kid and have so many great memories.
“I stood in my sister Courtney’s first winner’s circle back in 2012,” she said, recalling her younger sibling’s final round Funny Car win over Matt Hagan, “and I watched my dad make his way through the stands with the fans to celebrate his 150th win (in 2019) alongside Austin Prock,” who won the same race in a JFR Top Fuel dragster.
“The goal this week is to stand in that same winners’ circle with my nine talented HendrickCars.com crewmates,” she said, “and the key to doing that is consistent runs in qualifying and on race day.”
The NHRA national record holder for time (3.623 seconds) and speed (341.59 miles per hour), Force and a team led by crew chiefs David Grubnic and John Collins slowly have begun to regain the power and consistency that propelled them to the 2022 series championship in a season in which they qualified No. 1 at 10 of 22 races and posted top speed at 17 events.
Significantly, that was the year that the second youngest of Force’s daughters had her best outing at Pacific Raceways, qualifying No. 1 and powering her way to the final before losing to Tony Schumacher.
She aims to go one round further Sunday and become the seventh different JFR driver to win the tour’s northwesternmost event following her dad, Eric Medlen (the 2005 Funny Car winner), her sister, Tony Pedregon (2002 FC winner), Robert Hight (FC champion in 2017 and 2022) and Prock.
Friday’s late night qualifying session will afford the former NHRA Rookie of the Year an opportunity to flex the performance muscles in her 11,000-horsepower hybrid, one of only three drag racing vehicles to have reached the finish line at a speed exceeding 340 mph.
In addition to flying the HendrickCars.com banner, Brittany continues to support a philanthropic initiative launched by her sister and brother-in-law through the Graham and Courtney Rahal Foundation (GCRF) and Graham Rahal Performance (GRP).
Funds from the campaign support the expansion of the Optimal BrainHealth for Warfighters program at the University of Texas-Dallas which, in partnership with Virginia High Performance, addresses specific brain health issues of members of the military.
This story was originally published on July 16, 2025. 
