| GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 11, 2023) – In front of a sold-out crowd, Brittany Force and the Monster Energy / Flav-R-Pac Chevrolet dragster earned the No. 1 qualifying position at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway on Saturday evening. John Force and the BlueDEF PLATINUM Chevrolet Camaro SS will start from No. 2 with Robert Hight and the Flav-R-Pac / Cornwell Tools / AAA Camaro in No. 3. Austin Prock and the Montana Brand / Rocky Mountain Twist dragster will start their day from No. 12. For the 43rd time in her career, the second time at Gainesville Raceway, Force will start race day from No. 1 after her 3.699-second pass at 336.99 mph from a weather-ridden Friday held through Saturday’s two sessions. Force and her David Grubnic tuned hot rod would stay consistent in the final two qualifying runs with a 3.744 at 335.48 that also won her the first round of the Pep Boys All-Star NHRA Callout and earned the team three bonus points. In the Pep Boys Callout semifinals, after selecting to race against Josh Hart, the Monster Energy dragster would smoke the tires almost immediately. Force would watch Hart, the eventual Callout winner, drive around her as she coasted to an 8.884. Force would have redemption in the final qualifying session going 3.718 seconds at 336.15 mph, again the quickest of the session earning the Monster Energy team another three bonus points. “Overall, this Monster Energy / Flav-R-Pac team got the No. 1. It was a bummer to lose out on the All-Star Callout. We felt good going strong going into it, we made it to the semis, but we got beat. Now the bigger focus is race day tomorrow. We put today behind us, and we start all over again going into race day and we’re at the top spot,” said Force who will race against Keith Murt in the first round of eliminations. “We were low of that last session and that’s outstanding, running in different conditions, and still being able to run low. Those runs are awesome, and we benefitted from getting that extra run for being in the Callout so it helps us out on race day.” John Force and the BlueDEF Camaro were consistent through qualifying. Already with a 3.898-second pass from Friday, crew chiefs Danny Hood and Tim Fabrisi would string together a 3.936 run at 329.91 mph and a 3.878 run at 329.91 mph. Both would earn the legendary driver bonus points for a total of seven through the weekend. Force’s efforts would land him the No. 2 qualifying position. “I was riding on a high coming in here after the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. Then you get out here and you realize what your job really is and that was to get into the show,” said Force who matches up with Dave Richards first round. “Good two days of qualifying for this BlueDEF Chevy. We got in the show, did our job, we aren’t low but we got No. 2 so overall it’s good and we’ll see what happened tomorrow.” Coming into the day in No. 5, Robert Hight and the Flav-R-Pac Camaro shook things up on Saturday. They’d shake the tires in the first session for only a 5.564-second pass at 126.65 mph but it would be their final run that put them in the No. 3 spot. Hight would handle the Flav-R-Pac Chevy to an impressive 3.879 run at 333.99, the third-quickest pass of the session earning them a bonus point. “We were down on power that first run of qualifying then we had a little too much on it earlier today. That second run was good for this Flav-R-Pac team. We’re back. There’s still more out there, too,” said Hight who races against John Smith first round. “I’m not worried, feeling good about race day. If we had had one more run in those similar conditions today, we probably would have gone low. That’s good for tomorrow.” After a 3.779-second pass at 324.44 mph on Friday afternoon, Austin Prock and the Montana Brand / RMT dragster would run into some trouble during Saturday qualifying. Prock would lose traction and have to shut it off to go only 4.564 at 164.89 which would also lose him the first round of the Pep Boys Callout to Hart. The final session would be more of the same for the Montana Brand team, smoking the tires early to go 7.915 at 112.36. “A little bit of a rough start on the weekend for this Montana Brand / RMT team. Missed on the power level on Friday but made a nice clean pass and luckily it got us in the show,” said Prock who will take on Clay Millican first round. “Going into the Callout we were pushing in the first run today. It did smoke the tires, but it was really close to going and if it would have went it would have ripped off low E.T. We looked a little more mixed up than we actually are. I’m not really worried about tomorrow. I know we have the best people upstairs in the lounge and one of the best crews out here. I’ll be on my game and I know they will and we’ll see how our cards fall.” The Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway will continue with two eliminations on Sunday slated for a 10 a.m. start. Television coverage of the event continues with a dedicated Pep Boys All-Start Callout show at 10:30 a.m. ET on FOX Sports 1 (FS1). Sunday race day action will be at noon ET on FOX Broadcasting Network. -30- |
 AUSTIN PROCK, 27, Montana Brand / Rocky Mountain Twist DragsterQualifying:12th; 3.779-seconds; 324.44 mphBonus Qualifying Points:0 BRITTANY FORCE, 36, Monster Energy / Flav-R-Pac DragsterQualifying:1st; 3.699-seconds; 336.99 mphBonus Qualifying Points:+9 (quickest Q1, Q3 & Q4)   JOHN FORCE, 73, BlueDEF PLATINUM Chevrolet Camaro SSQualifying:2nd; 3.898-seconds; 335.07 mphBonus Qualifying Points: +7 (second quickest Q1 & Q4, quickest Q3) ROBERT HIGHT, 53, Auto Club Chevy Camaro SSQualifying:5th; 3.911-seconds; 331.28 mphBonus Qualifying Points:+1 (3rd quickest Q4) |
· After topping the speed chart in yesterday’s practice session, Kyle Larson (No. 5 
Harrison Burton and the No. 21 DEX Imaging Mustang are set to start Sunday’s United Rentals Work United 500 at Phoenix Raceway from 27th place.
We interviewed you last week in Las Vegas and you told us there were some details that your car needed, although your car was pretty fast. “I feel like the car yesterday was good; not great and not bad. Just good. Probably the best we’ve had a car in a while. We’re one more step in the right direction. I think the positive is that we know what we need and I feel like we’re in the ballpark. Right now, yesterday, we didn’t have a winning car but we had a car that in my opinion can have the potential for it. 
ROSS CHASTAIN, NO. 1 KUBOTA CAMARO ZL1: Post-Practice QuotesHow different did this feel this year compared to what you had here last November? “We’re at a large loss of grip, I think even compared to the field. We missed it a bit.”
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 ALLY BEST FRIENDS CAMARO ZL1: Post-Practice Quotes“I feel like our No. 48 Ally Camaro is pretty decent. Cool to have Best Friends on board this week and overall, it was a solid practice for us.”
JOSH BERRY, NO. 9 KELLEY BLUE BOOK CAMARO ZL1: Post-Practice QuotesHow excited or nervous are you? Can you take me through Monday and Tuesday until they told you that you were definitely going to do it? What type of emotions or conversations did you have? “Well, to be fair, really before I got home from Vegas, I had a pretty good idea that I was racing. So that eased my mind a little bit and let us focus on this week. We were able to start preparing really as soon as we got home. Monday afternoon, I was at HMS; and in the afternoon, I was at Chevrolet (Technical Center) running laps (on the simulator). It’s been a busy week. 
With the new aerodynamic package, can you describe what the behavior of the car is like? “Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the ones that got to test this package, or a similar package to what we’re racing this weekend. But from my understanding from what I heard is – yes, it’s a little bit more difficult to drive by itself. It will be a little bit of a looser feeling in the back of the car; less rear downforce, less overall downforce. But it should – we hope – that it will be a little bit better in traffic where you won’t be effected as much by trailing the car in front of you and the wake that the car in front of you puts off.” How would you assess the effectiveness of the length of the longer restart zone? Do you feel like it gives you any more of an advantage or any more of an ability to dictate the way things go? “No.. I think all it’s done is cause that wreck at California (Auto Club Speedway). So in my opinion, it’s done nothing different; nothing on the positive end. It’s only added a negative end to it because at California, Joey (Logano) was just maintaining his speed and everyone was gaining, gaining, gaining, gaining and closing up their gaps because they were all trying to lay back and then time the run. So he just waited for everybody to run into everybody and then went at the end of the zone. So the later you make that zone, the more anticipation everyone has and the more of an accordion effect that you’ll get. I knew that going in and I was not a proponent of lengthening that zone, but nobody tends to listen to me a whole lot.” How relieved are you just the simple fact that Chevrolet just seems to be on top of their game to start this season? “Yeah, it’s all the KB effect.. everything right here. Got them all tuned into the right pages and we’re rolling (laughs). But no seriously, I’m going to give a huge props to Eric Warren (Chevrolet’s Director of NASCAR Programs), his group, his team and everybody at the Chevy Tech Center. They have been doing a really good job and a lot of stuff behind the scenes has kind of been happening. I’ve been involved in a little bit of that, especially on the truck side with our guys at KBM, but also some of the Cup stuff. Just trying to work on some of the processes and things that they do. But they’ve come out and done a nice job so far, so that’s positive for our start to the season.” NASCAR has added a 50-minute practice at COTA. Can you address how helpful that is when you’re starting with a new team like you are? “Yeah, well we tested there in January, so I was one of the ones that was like ‘we don’t need the practice, we’re good’. I don’t want to give anybody else anymore added track time. We had plenty when we were there. We ran close to 200 laps and I was smoked after that one. So I didn’t need anymore track time. But we got that I guess, so we’ll work on what we need to work on with the reduced downforce and the changes that they made to the car. We felt like we had a really good test. We have really good notes on what we had there. We tested with last year’s stuff, not this current one, and so it’s going to be a lot different I’m sure. I don’t know – just with the amount of stuff that you can do in sim, I feel like it would be fine for us if we didn’t have practice. But we’ll take the 50 minutes and go.” As somebody new coming in, even with what you’ve been able to do and accomplish, how did you take going into those team meetings? How forceful – I don’t know if that’s the right word – but in bringing things up and opening ideas? What is the dynamic of those meetings and how is that maybe different from previous experiences?“Certainly there was a big discussion on that; just on how they’ve (RCR) done things, how I’ve done things. We had a whole roundtable discussion of the key people that we needed. This was early January, so we kind of hammered through a bunch of stuff and I brought up a lot of different topics. I still don’t have all of what I want accomplished yet. Most of that is data-driven and stuff you get after practice or after qualifying and things, so still pushing on much of that. We don’t have all of that how I want it yet. But everything else, the team meetings have gone well. I feel like they’ve been a little bit productive. Hopefully those that are with us in those meetings feel the same way, so it’s been a good sense. I know Austin (Dillon) and I have really liked the way that it is and how we got it setup, so it’s been useful for us.” With your homework and studying in essence and all the work you do for each event, have you had to do anything new in learning more about this group or seeing how they do things to be able to kind of bring up ‘hey, I know you did this here, but here is another example of a way to do potentially better’.. how does that impact how you study? “Yeah, I mean last week, we struggled at Las Vegas (Motor Speedway).. let’s be honest. Last year at Vegas, we were really good with the Toyota bunch and the Toyota bunch showed decent speed there as well too. I wasn’t privy to those setup sheets, so I wasn’t able to just hand that over and say ‘here, this is what we need to do.. this is where we need to go and start from’. But we’ve been working a lot from their stuff that they’ve been accustomed to and what they’ve been running. Obviously Fontana was a huge success for us; that really worked. Vegas, I thought was going to be better than what it was. We’re still working on some of those answers as to what happened there, but here last year, the No. 8 team ran second and third there towards the later stages of the race and had a good run. Austin (Dillon) was in the top-10 before I think the last-lap crash that we was in. So again, you try to rely on what they did last year and improve it as much as you can with the tools that you have right now. But until you go out there and run these races, really that’s the learning.. is what happens in the race. And then being able to go back and really dissect each and every piece of the car, the race, strategy, pit calls, changes you make, all of that stuff. So these meetings last quite a while.” This package is supposed to put it more in the drivers’ hands and make it more difficult to drive the cars. You have so much experience, so do you feel like that benefits you? “Yeah, I mean you would say that – yes, you want it to be more in the driver’s hands. Although last year, I think I set a new record for the amount of times you can spin out during the season. I was about backwards in every race, so that was not fun. I think that just kind of goes to show that some guys, they’ll run on the way up the mountain and then they won’t get over peak and go down peak. Where I feel like when I race, I get up to peak and I try to teeter on the front side and the back side of that before completely losing it. So I’m always just maybe a little bit closer to that edge, so that’s some of my issue of spinning or having issues sometimes. But trying to get the most out of everything you’ve got, so having a little bit something that you have to finesse and feel, it just takes a little bit of learning that. Hopefully we got more grip than all the rest.” What is your reaction to having two prominent F1 drivers like Kimi Räikkönen and Jenson Button coming to NASCAR? “Yeah, I mean I hope Kimi (Räikkönen) gets a better opportunity than he had his last time out; going out there and running a full race. But I think it’s fun. I think it’s great that they have that opportunity. Trackhouse won that race last year, so you know they’ll be a force to be reckoned with. The SHR guys I think are doing the No. 15 ride for Jenson (Button). It’s cool to see the diversity of different backgrounds of drivers and where they come from. I’m not excited, but it’s going to be cool to have them out there and be a part of our show. They’re not used to the full contact sport of what NASCAR is. I’m sure Kimi’s eyes were opened quite a bit on how all that went down at Watkins Glen. But he’s more ready and more prepared this time around.” What about William Byron getting back in a KBM truck?“Yeah, that’s going to be great for us. Really good to have William (Byron) – a KBM alum – to come back and work with us again and being a part of the Chevy team. Excited that