Drag Racing to go mainstream with 'Driving Forces'

Discussion in 'Alcohol Racing News' started by Will Hanna, Jan 13, 2006.

  1. Will Hanna

    Will Hanna We put the 'inside' in Top Alcohol
    Staff Member

    Joined:
    May 6, 2003
    Messages:
    6,706
    Likes Received:
    132
    Team Castrol News/John Force

    For Immediate Release
    A&E TAKES DRAG RACING MAINSTREAM
    WITH ‘DRIVING FORCE’ REALITY SERIES
    Show Focusing on Sport’s First Family to Debut This Summer

    PASADENA, Calif. – A&E Network on Thursday revealed its plans for Driving Force, a 2006 reality series focusing on NHRA champion John Force and his attempt to re-connect with a family estranged by his all-consuming 30-year-long obsession with
    professional drag racing.

    A 13-time NHRA Funny Car Champion and the only drag racer to have won as many as 100 POWERade tour events (119), Force was introduced Thursday, along with wife Laurie and daughters Ashley, 23, Brittany, 19, and Courtney, 17, to members of the Television Critics Association at their annual convention at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Driving Force will make it’s A&E debut this summer.

    The show will be produced for A&E by Schmaguuli, LLC, with Oscar winner Stephen Hopkins (The Life and Times of Peter Sellers), David Schermerhorn and Brent Travers serving as executive producers. Jennifer Anderson is co-executive producer and Kate Garwood co-producer for Schmaguuli.

    Driving Force primarily will deal with Force’s three youngest daughters (oldest daughter Adria Hight, 36, is CFO of John Force Racing, Inc.) and their interaction with a father who, because of the demands of the tour, spent little time at the family’s Yorba Linda, Calif., home during their childhood.

    The upshot is that he missed all the ballet lessons, piano recitals, cheerleader tryouts, school plays, proms and almost everything else as his daughters grew from toddlers to the young women they are today. However, through drag racing, a sport which for 20 years kept the family apart, the gregarious champion hopes to put it all back together.

    All three girls have begun their own driving careers and now are just beginning to understand the differences in their dad’s world and the more traditional one in which they grew up with their mother, who assumed almost total responsibility for their upbringing.

    According to A&E’s official press release, which likens the former truck driver to Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, “Force is....one of the most outrageous personalities in the history of American sports, combining the dangerous charisma and charm of Gary Busey and Elvis with the down home likeability of Andy Griffith.”

    With the NHRA POWERade tour as a backdrop, Driving Force is expected to provide an inside look at the man who has won 13 championships in the last 16 years as he tries to re-connect not only with his daughters, but with his wife of 24 years.

    A&E portrays the series as “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughters meets the bone-rattling thrills of the drag strip.”

    NHRA President Tom Compton said “The Driving Force show on the A&E network reflects NHRA’s ongoing effort to expand our fan base and expose NHRA drag racing to a much broader audience. John Force is one of NHRA’s greatest ambassadors and I am confident that this program will serve to introduce new fans to the sport which will in turn benefit the entire NHRA community.”

    A&E Network reaches more than 88 million cable and satellite households, bringing viewers a diverse mix of entertainment ranging from critically-acclaimed original movies to dramatic series, to reality shows like Driving Force, to the Emmy Award-winning Biography series.

    John Force Racing, Inc., is a drag racing dynasty employing more than 60 men and women which, over the last 16 seasons, has accounted for more than 150 NHRA tour victories and 14 series championships.

    The team will begin its latest championship quest with three front-line Funny Cars in addition to Super Comp dragsters for Brittany and Courtney. For the third consecutive season, Ashley will drive the Castrol A/Fuel dragster for car owners Jerry Darien and Ken Meadows while continuing to test a Funny Car in anticipation of moving up in classification in 2007.

    John Force, who finished third in POWERade points a year ago despite the fact that he earned a category-best five victories, will debut a new 2006 Castrol GTX Ford Mustang at the season-opening CARQUEST Winternationals at Pomona, Calif., Feb. 9-12. He will be joined by Next Generation teammates Eric Medlen, 32, and Robert Hight, 36, both former crew members.

    Medlen drove the Castrol SYNTEC Ford to three victories last season, as many as series champion Gary Scelzi, en route to fourth place in the driver standings. Hight earned the prestigious Automobile Club of Southern California Road to the Future Award last year as the NHRA Rookie-of-the-year. He’ll return for a second season at the wheel of the Auto Club Mustang.

    -www.johnforceracing.com-
     
    #1

Share This Page