As a result, Ashley Force Hood rolls into Bandimere Speedway this week as the Funny Car favorite in the 30th annual Mopar Mile-High Nationals.

It's an exceedingly lofty position for a third year driver who has qualified only once in two tries at the Mile-High Nationals and who has yet to win a racing round on the track known as Mt. Bandimere.

It's even more remarkable considering Force Hood's gender.

Before she burst onto the scene in 2007, winning the Auto Club's Road to the Future Award as the NHRA Rookie of the Year, conventional wisdom suggested that women simply didn't have the physical strength needed to ride herd on the most powerful and unpredictable race cars in the world.

Wrestling a short-wheelbase, 2,555-pound, 8,000 horsepower, supercharged race car down the track under G force pressures to which only jet fighter pilots and astronauts can relate simply was not considered "woman's work."

After all, it had been 10 years since a woman had even raced in the category. Furthermore, a woman never had taken a Funny Car as far as the semifinals in national event competition, much less won a race. A woman never had qualified No. 1; never even finished in the Top 10 in points.

It took Ashley little more than a year-and-a-half to completely rewrite Funny Car history.

She reached the semifinals in just her fifth start, the final round in only her 20th race and ended her rookie campaign in 10th place. She won for the first time six races into her sophomore season and started No. 1 back-to-back last year at Sonoma, Calif., and Brainerd, Minn.

Nevertheless, that was just a preamble to what already has been a sensational 2009. After winning for the second time last March at Houston, Texas, the graduate of Cal State-Fullerton now has set her sights on a familiar goal the NHRA Funny Car championship claimed by a John Force Racing driver 15 times in the last 19 years.

And why shouldn't she be a world championship contender? Not only does she have her dad's genes and the benefit of his considerable resources, she has the sponsor that adorned his car for every one of his victories and her co-crew chief, Dean "Guido" Antonelli, was the Team Leader on the Castrol GTX entry when John Force won 10 of his 14 individual titles.

It's proven to be a formidable combination, one that should keep Ashley in contention regardless of what happens with this weekend's weather.

"We have a car that runs good in the cool, but it also runs good in the heat," Ashley said. "You're not going to win championships being timid (and) my crew chiefs (Antonelli and Ron Douglas) haven't been afraid to take chances. Sometimes what they do works; sometimes it doesn't, but this is the time to learn what the limits are before we get to the Countdown."

"It's great to be going to the semifinals and finals, week after week," she said, "(and) that's what we're going to try to do at Denver because we know this Western Swing is crucial. Dad taught me to just take it one round at a time and that's worked pretty well for us so far."

- Ashley was the 2008 winner of the Auto Club's Road to the Future Award as the NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year.
- Ashley's Castrol GTX Mustang was the fastest Funny Car at the 1,000 foot distance in 2008 (310.05 mph) and is the fastest at the same distance this year (312.13 mph).
- Ashley was one of only four Funny Car points leaders last year along with teammate Robert Hight, Tim Wilkerson and eventual champion Cruz Pedregon

Off the Track:
- Ashley appears with brother-in-law Robert Hight in a TV ad for the Automobile Club of Southern California and is a spokesperson for Castrol, Ford, BrandSource, Auto Club and others.
- Ashley was recognized in 2008 as the Female Athlete of the Year by the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation in Los Angeles.
- Ashley and her cat, Simba, were the subjects of a photo shoot with photographer David Woo for an upcoming book about celebrities and their pets.
- Ashley was one of the stars of the real life series "Driving Force," which aired for two seasons on A&E Network and chronicled here development as a driver.
- Ashley was among a group of drivers and NHRA sponsors who participated in the Opening Bell ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, June 10. She was joined by BP/Castrol executive Marci Brand, Regional Vice-President, Automotive Americas, as well as by NHRA president Tom Compton and drivers Antron Brown, Bob Tasca III, Morgan Lucas, Karen Stoffer, Tony Pedregon and Eddie Krawiec.

http://www.johnforceracing.com For more information about Castrol-branded products and services, please visit us at Castrol.com/US

Courtesy of Dave Densmore