Force Hood, daughter of drag racing legend John Force, rolls her 310 mile-an-hour Castrol GTXR Ford Mustang into Memphis Motorsports Park for this week's 22nd annual O'Reilly Auto Parts Mid-South Nationals trailing teammate and brother-in-law Robert Hight by just 13 points in the battle for the NHRA Full Throttle Championship.

If the graduate of Cal State-Fullerton goes on to become the first woman ever to win the NHRA Funny Car title, she may owe it all to the gastric distress through which she suffered two weeks ago at Charlotte, N.C., site of the first of the six races that make up the NHRA's Countdown to One playoffs.

"At Charlotte, I was horribly ill," she said. "I've never been so sick in my life (and) I was just trying to get through each hour of the day. I wasn't even thinking about reaction times and I cut the best lights of my whole career.

"I'm not going to go out and get food poisoning the next four weeks, but because I was Ill, I was focused on just what I had to do, which mainly was to make sure I didn't get sick in my helmet," she joked. "It was a really clear lesson for me on how I perform. I really perform best when I don't put a lot of extra pressure on myself.

"What I saw this year is that at the races where I was running (two-time series champion) Tony Pedregon or somebody else who has left on me a lot of times, I was focused so hard on cutting a light that my reaction times actually would get worse instead of better," said the former high school cheerleader.

"At Charlotte, I just went up there and did my job without over-thinking it. I'm going to try to use that for these next four races," she said, "(although) I haven't quite figured out how other than eating some more bad chicken.

"You obviously have to concentrate and be excited and pumped up, but there is a point, when you go past it, that you're only hurting yourself. It's a balance that I'm still learning, that's for sure."

Ashley believes most athletes suffer the same challenges with a few exceptions.

"My father does his best under intense stress," she said. "The more that's on the line, that's when he performs the best. Not that many people, I think, are like that. Most people do their best when they're not feeling all that pressure, but there are certain athletes, and dad's one of them, who really shine under pressure."

That said, Ashley believes she and her team have an excellent shot at winning the championship if they can just find a way to beat Hight and crew chief Jimmy Prock, who have bested them in the semifinals en route to two straight victories.

She is especially excited about returning to MMP, a track on which she qualified No. 1 and set a track record (4.097 seconds) last year before losing a narrow .014 of a second decision to Tim Wilkerson in the Funny Car final.

Moreover, despite the added pressure of the championship chase, the three-time tour winner, national record-holder (312.13 miles per hour) and former NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year (2007) admits that she's having fun.

"I love being a Funny Car driver," she said, "but I'm jealous of the fans getting to watch all this go down because it's going to be exciting."

Did You Know?
- Ashley is one of only two Funny Car drivers, with brother-in-law Robert Hight, the current points leader, to have led the points each of the last two years.
- Ashley was named 2008 Female Athlete of the Year by the Los Angeles-based Jim Murray Memorial Foundation.
- 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 again this year at 312.13 mph, a speed NHRA now recognizes as the official national record at 1,000 feet.

Off the Track:
- Ashley was among a group of drivers and NHRA sponsors who participated in the Opening Bell ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange on June 10. She was joined by BP/Castrol executive Marci Brand, Regional Vice-President, Automotive Americas, among others.
- Ashley and her cat, Simba, will be featured in a soon-to-be released coffee table book on athletes and their pets created by award-winning photographer David Woo.

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