For two-time World Champion Brittany Force and the crew that maintains her Monster Energy Chevrolet Top Fuel dragster, starting the NHRA’s Countdown to the Championship from the No. 9 position isn’t so much a challenge as it is an opportunity, one on which they hope to capitalize in this week’s 39th Pep Boys Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway.

In a season of struggle, punctuated by the 300 mile per hour crash that left her dad, 16-time Funny Car champion John Force, with a Traumatic Brain Injury from which he now is recovering, the 38-year-old had to reach deep just to make the starting field after failing to qualify for one race and missing another to be with family.

Nevertheless, now that’s she’s in it, she knows she can win it.  

If that seems a little presumptuous, especially since no driver ever has won the championship from a No. 9 start, know that Force has watched two different John Force Racing teammates improve their standing by nine positions in playoffs.

NHRA President Robert Hight, currently on medical leave, won the 2009 Funny Car championship from the No. 10 starting spot, the only driver ever to do so, and, before he climbed into Hight’s Cornwell Tools Chevy Camaro this season, Austin Prock advanced from 12th to third in Top Fuel points in 2022.

Force could not start her pending uphill climb in a more favorable environment than the one at Maple Grove, the track on which she set the current NHRA national record (3.623 seconds), the track speed record (337.66 miles per hour) and on which she has won 66.6 percent of her two-car matches (18-9).

“I’m thrilled to be heading into the first race of the Countdown,” said the 16-time tour winner. “The (Top Fuel) competition is the toughest I’ve experienced in my career (and) I’m proud of our team’s fight to clinch our position in Indy (where she was the No. 1 qualifier and a semifinalist in the 70th U.S. Nationals).

“We made major progress throughout the season and the great thing about the Countdown is (that) everyone’s points reset,” said the 2013 NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year. “So, starting at Maple Grove, every (qualified) driver has an opportunity at chasing the championship. 

“I feel confident coming into a racetrack where we’ve previously won and set the national record – but we have no room for mistakes. The plan is to continue qualifying at the top and going rounds on race day.”

The No. 1 qualifier in 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2022 (and the No. 2 starter a year ago), she won the Pep Boys Nationals in 2017 and has been runner-up on two other occasions.