Ashley Force Hood (born November 29, 1982) is a
funny carFunny Car is a drag racing car class. In the USA, other "professional" classes are Top Fuel, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle. Funny cars have forward-mounted engines and carbon fiber automotive bodies over the chassis, giving them an appearance vaguely approximating manufacturers' showroom models...
drag racerDrag racing is a competition in which vehicles compete to be the first to cross a set finish line, usually from a standing start, and in a straight line. First gaining popularity in the USA after World War II , the sport steadily grew in popularity and spread across the globe...
. She is the daughter of 14-time
NHRAThe National Hot Rod Association is a drag racing governing body, which sets rules in drag racing and host events all over the United States and Canada...
Funny CarFunny Car is a drag racing car class. In the USA, other "professional" classes are Top Fuel, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle. Funny cars have forward-mounted engines and carbon fiber automotive bodies over the chassis, giving them an appearance vaguely approximating manufacturers' showroom models...
national champion
John ForceJohn Force is an NHRA drag racer and 14 - time Funny Car champion. He is one of the most dominant drag racers in the sport with 126 career victories...
and his wife Laurie Force. She is married to Daniel Hood, who works for John Force Racing.
Force was also selected as the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series' Rookie–of–the–Year (Funny Car division) in November 2007. On April 27, 2008, Force earned her first ever NHRA professional win, defeating her father in the final round, and becoming the first woman to earn a win in the Funny Car class at the NHRA Summit Southern Nationals held at the Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia.
As a
Top AlcoholTop Alcohol dragsters are akin to 'junior' versions of the premier Top Fuel dragster class. They are required to burn a lower-performance mixture of alcohol fuel instead of more volatile nitromethane. Engine sizes cannot exceed 8.7 L . Nitromethane-burning entries may also race in this...
division rookie, she won three of the season’s final five races including the 50th annual Mac Tools U.S.
Ashley Force Hood (born November 29, 1982) is a
funny carFunny Car is a drag racing car class. In the USA, other "professional" classes are Top Fuel, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle. Funny cars have forward-mounted engines and carbon fiber automotive bodies over the chassis, giving them an appearance vaguely approximating manufacturers' showroom models...
drag racerDrag racing is a competition in which vehicles compete to be the first to cross a set finish line, usually from a standing start, and in a straight line. First gaining popularity in the USA after World War II , the sport steadily grew in popularity and spread across the globe...
. She is the daughter of 14-time
NHRAThe National Hot Rod Association is a drag racing governing body, which sets rules in drag racing and host events all over the United States and Canada...
Funny CarFunny Car is a drag racing car class. In the USA, other "professional" classes are Top Fuel, Pro Stock, and Pro Stock Motorcycle. Funny cars have forward-mounted engines and carbon fiber automotive bodies over the chassis, giving them an appearance vaguely approximating manufacturers' showroom models...
national champion
John ForceJohn Force is an NHRA drag racer and 14 - time Funny Car champion. He is one of the most dominant drag racers in the sport with 126 career victories...
and his wife Laurie Force. She is married to Daniel Hood, who works for John Force Racing.
Force was also selected as the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series' Rookie–of–the–Year (Funny Car division) in November 2007. On April 27, 2008, Force earned her first ever NHRA professional win, defeating her father in the final round, and becoming the first woman to earn a win in the Funny Car class at the NHRA Summit Southern Nationals held at the Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia.
Drag racing career
As a
Top AlcoholTop Alcohol dragsters are akin to 'junior' versions of the premier Top Fuel dragster class. They are required to burn a lower-performance mixture of alcohol fuel instead of more volatile nitromethane. Engine sizes cannot exceed 8.7 L . Nitromethane-burning entries may also race in this...
division rookie, she won three of the season’s final five races including the 50th annual Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, and the season-ending Automobile Club of
Southern CaliforniaSouthern California, or SoCal, is defined as the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its population centers around three major metropolitan areas, each of which have over 3 million people; the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area with over 12 million inhabitants, the San Bernardino-Riverside...
at
PomonaPomona is the fifth largest city in Los Angeles County, California . As of the 2000 census, the city population was 149,473. In 2005, its population was estimated as 160,815....
, where she shared the winners’ circle with her father - the NHRA’s first ever father-daughter winners. Ashley finished 2004 fourth in national driver points.
2007
In 2007, Ashley Force moved into the professional ranks, driving a Castrol-sponsored Mustang Funny Car for her father's team, John Force Racing.
Ashley Force and her father made NHRA history in Atlanta in April when they became the first father and daughter to race against each other. Ashley won the round with an elapsed time of 4.779 seconds, and a terminal speed of 317.05 miles per hour. She advanced to the semifinals, which tied her for the best ever Funny Car event finish for a female.
In October 2007, at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, she became the first female to compete in a national series Funny Car final round, but was defeated on a holeshot by Tony Pedregon.
2008
Early in the 2008 racing season, she worked her way to the final round of eliminations in three consecutive meetings: Houston, Las Vegas, and Atlanta. She made her first final round appearance of the year on March 30 at Houston, but lost to Del Worsham. At Las Vegas, she was defeated in the final by
Tim WilkersonTim Wilkerson is a NHRA drag racer. He graduated from Southeast High School in Springfield, IL and earned an Associates in Science of Civil Engineering from Lincoln Land Community College. He is married to Krista and has three children, Daniel , Kevin, and Rachel...
, yet became the first female racer ever to lead the NHRA Funny Car point standings. On April 27, 2008, at Atlanta, her opponent in the final was her dad, 14-time NHRA Funny Car champion John Force, who was seeking to score the 1000th round win of his career. Ashley claimed her first-ever NHRA Funny Car win on that day, the first ever for a woman, as she roared to victory with a 4.837-second elapsed time, the second quickest of the weekend in the Funny Car class.
2009
Force garnered the second win of her career on March 29, 2009 at the O'Reilly NHRA Spring Nationals; in the finals she beat her former instructor
Jack BeckmanJack Beckman is a professional drag racer who currently drives a NHRA Fuel Funny Car for Don Schumacher Racing...
.
Jack beat Ashley in the first round of eliminations at the next race at Las Vegas. She then gathered her fourth career #1 qualifier at the southern nationals, in which Jack Beckman got payback by beating Force-Hood in the final. Ashley compiled her fifth career #1 qualifier at the Thunder Valley Nationals
http://www.nhra.com/results/default.aspx
At the Mac Tools US Nationals in Indianapolis, Ashley won over teammate Robert Hight to earn her the distinction of not only being the first female Funny Car driver to win at Indianapolis, but the first female driver to win in two different classes.
Television
Ashley Force is featured with her family on
A&EA&E is a cable and satellite television network with headquarters in Manhattan and offices in Stamford, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London. A&E stands for Arts & Entertainment, which, for many years, was in the channel's full title...
's reality show
Driving ForceDriving Force was an American reality television program which premiered July 17, 2006, on A&E, ending on May 15, 2007. It was centered around John Force, a drag racer, and his drag racing daughters.- About the show :...
.
Personal Life
She has two sisters, Courtney and Brittany, and an older half-sister, Adria. On December 13, 2008, Ashley married the parts manager of the Castrol GTX Funny Car team, Daniel Hood, in
Lake TahoeLake Tahoe is a large freshwater lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains of the United States. It is located along the border between California and Nevada, west of Carson City, Nevada. Lake Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in North America...
and now goes by Ashley Force Hood.
Force attended
Esperanza High SchoolEsperanza High School is a 9th–12th grade public high school located in Anaheim, California that is part of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. It is a California Distinguished School and home to many C.I.F...
in Anaheim, CA, where she was a cheerleader. In 2003, Force graduated from California State University-Fullerton with a B.A. in communications with an emphasis in television and video. In 2007 she was voted as the Hottest Athlete by an AOL Sports Poll, beating out favorites
Tom BradyThomas Edward "Tom" Brady, Jr. is an American football quarterback for the New England Patriots of the National Football League. After playing college football at Michigan, Brady was drafted by the Patriots in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft.He has played in four Super Bowls, winning three...
and
Danica PatrickDanica Sue Patrick is an American auto racing driver, currently competing in the IndyCar Series, as well as a model and advertising spokeswoman. She was raised in Roscoe, Illinois. Patrick was named the Rookie of the Year for both the 2005 Indianapolis 500 and the 2005 IndyCar Series season...
.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news?slug=ap-autoracingbriefs&prov=ap&type=lgns
External links