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John Force Records 125th NHRA Funny Car Win and Travis Kvapil Captures Victory in Ford Dominated NASCAR Truck Race


August 2007
 Filed under: RACING Car News | RACING Headlines
DEARBORN, Mich., August 12 – Both John Force and Travis Kvapil captured victories for Ford Racing this weekend that moved both drivers into championship contention.

Force won his second consecutive NHRA race in his Castrol GTX Mustang, while Kvapil was one of six Ford F-150 drivers to finish in the top-10 in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. Robby Gordon and Matt Kenseth were the top Ford Fusion drivers in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup and Busch Series races at Watkins Glen, respectively.

With his victory in Brainerd, Force has now won a record 125 Funny Car races and has secured a spot in this year’s Countdown to the Championship with one event to go before the playoffs. En route to the win, Force defeated Gary Densham in the first round, Jeff Arend in the second, teammate Robert Hight the third round and Kenny Bernstein in the finals.
"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," said Force. "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.”

Kvapil’s victory was his third of the season and the eighth win of his career in the Truck series. He led for 47 of the final 48 laps and moved up one spot to third in the championship points standings.

“It was pretty awesome,” said Kvapil. “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.

“We had a good note on it an always had speed every time we take it to the race track. We were 10 th or 15 th 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 10 th 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.”

Rick Crawford, driver of the No. 14 F-150 was impressed with Ford’s dominance of the race.

“Look at that, six Fords in the top-10,” said Crawford. “These F-Series pick-ups are Built Ford Tough and all the guys driving a Ford in the top-10 made some bold moves tonight. Congratulations to Travis (Kvapil) and the Roush Yates combination under the hood. We’ve got one, too; it brought us from 28 th to sixth. So, a good job by the Circle Bar Racing guys and Power Stroke Diesel by International. The truck was fun to drive, always exciting and I really had a good time tonight in my F-Series pick-up.”

In the NEXTEL Cup race at Watkins Glen, three Ford drivers grabbed top 10 finishes. Qualifying was cancelled due to weather conditions on Friday and Marcos Ambrose didn’t get an opportunity to qualify and make his Cup debut in Robby Gordon’s No. 77.

On Sunday, Gordon had his best showing of the season when he finished fifth in his No. 7 Fusion.

“A good points day,” Gordon said. “It should make up for missing last weekend, for sure. We’re going to race track at Michigan where I ran a top-10 the whole time we were there last time, so I expect to have a good run there, as well.”

Carl Edwards, who finished eighth, was just two turns away from a top-two finish. Edwards was battling for the lead with race winner Tony Stewart before he spun out going for the lead and eventually finished eighth.

“I just figured the [heck] with it,” said Edwards. “I’ve got one more braking zone before the end of this race and I just went in a little deeper than I had and wheel-hopped it. Lucky I practiced going through there; in practice, you know, I went through that same gravel trap. I knew I wouldn’t lose too many spots if I did mess up, and we ended up eighth, which my guys deserve better than that, but still, a fun day and I just didn’t want to finish second. I really wanted to get ’em.”

Edwards moved up one spot to fifth place in Cup standings and is still the leader in the Busch standings, with a commanding 766-point lead over second place driver David Reutimann. Matt Kenseth was the top Ford driver in the Busch race at Watkins Glen, finishing sixth and moving up five spots to 12 th in the standings

“I thought that was really good,” Kenseth said. “That was the first Busch race I ran here in, like, eight years, so I’m actually extremely happy with that. We ran pretty competitively, had a great strategy, had great pit stop, everything went right. If I was a little better at it, I’d have probably had a shot at the win, but with one hour of practice on a new car and me not being here a lot, that’s the best we could do.”

Next weekend the Nextel Cup and Busch competitors will head to Michigan International Speedway while the Truck series will remain in Tennessee to compete in Bristol on Aug.22. The NHRA will travel to Reading, Penn., while Mustang drivers in the KONI Challenge Series will be racing at Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.

Source: Ford Motor Company

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