The NHRA national event arrives at Brainerd International Raceway for the 42nd time with qualifying runs Friday. Year after year, the leading contenders in the main events are mostly familiar, although the most familiar of all, John Force, will not be on one of the world’s fastest quarter-miles.
Force, 75 and still trying to time the lights, crashed his Funny Car on June 23 at Virginia Motorsports Park. He came away with a diagnosis of a traumatic brain injury. He was released from a Richmond hospital on July 9 and is attempting to recover.
Jack Beckman has replaced him as a driver on the Force team. Austin Prock is leading the Funny Car points standings for the Force team, and Brittany Force, John’s daughter, is tenth in the Top Fuel standings.
Obviously, the circumstance that forced the great character of drag racing out of the picture for now was horrendous, but it is also true one negative at the top levels of NHRA is that there often seems to be a dearth of new talent.
Which brings up quite a positive for this weekend at BIR: Ida Zetterström, 30 and a very successful driver in Europe, will be making her NHRA debut in a Top Fuel dragster. She is a JMC racing teammate with one of those honored vets, Tony Schumacher.
“Tony has been great to me,” Zetterström said. “He has been very encouraging.”
Zetterström was in the Twin Cities and promoted her debut with a couple of television interviews. This is a new age for promotion, though, and she has gone from 20,000 to more than 200,000 followers on Instagram.
That has a chance to put a substantial number of young eyes on drag racing that never would have considered the possibility.