Ford Racing Update...

Ford Motor Company’s racing division (Ford Racing) has recently earned victories in two racing series - the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

NHRA legend John Force took his 2nd victory this season aboard his Castrol GTX Mustang in the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals race that took place in Brainerd, Minnesota. Overall, John Force has recorded 125 wins in Funny Car races. In addition, Force will have his own spot at the Countdown to the Championships.

John Force commented after the race:
"Austin Coil [crew chief] has run this track a lot more than me from the old days of match racing and he really knows this place, whether it's hot or cool here. This season has been something. Early on I couldn't beat anyone, including that girl named Force, and I remember awhile back telling Coil we were pathetic. Something just had us snake-bit and we never did find what it was.”

Meanwhile, Travis Kvapil won his 3rd race this season. Kvapil was one of the Ford drivers who finished in the top 10 in the recent Craftsman Truck Series race in Nashville behind the steering wheel of a Ford F-150 truck.

“It was pretty awesome. It took our K&N Ford half the race to get the track position and the right adjustment in it. We started practice yesterday and really weren’t any good. I expected to come here to be a contender. This is the truck we won with in Michigan with and finished second in Kentucky." said Travis Kvapil after the race.

He added: “We had a good note on it an always had speed every time we take it to the race track. We were 10th or 15th yesterday off the truck and we ran a lot of laps and made a lot of changes. The team really busted their tail in practice yesterday and the team engineer made all the right moves yesterday. We didn’t spend much time on qualifying effort and then got ready for qualifying. We started the race and it was a little too tight, but I felt like a lot of that attributed because to the fact that I was back there 10th and having a lot of traffic. Mike (Beam, crew chief) told me what the truck was doing and wanted to do some air pressure adjustments. That first stop, we made an air pressure adjustment off the tires and really lift the truck up and really brought it to life. The lap times we could run in the long haul were just amazing, we were three-tenths better than everybody and my truck was just driving good and we didn’t make any adjustments on the second stop… just made a fuel run.”

Other Ford Racing drivers also performed well in their respective racing series like Robby Gordon (top Ford driver in the recent NASCAR NEXTEL Cup race) and Matt Kenseth, who was the leading Ford driver in the recent NASCAR Busch Series race in Watkins Glen.