“This will be one I'll never forget. This has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember,” Brittany said. “I remember there have been so many close calls where we thought hey, this could be our day that we're gonna double up. To win a race is hard enough and then to do it with your teammates, it’s almost impossible. So it's like you almost put it on the backburner.
“To double up with your dad on the same day, where you both run well all weekend long, and then you double up, it just seems impossible. So today, we pulled off the impossible, and it's pretty cool that we'll always share this. This will be a special racetrack for us and it's pretty cool to have that with him.”
“it's been tough on us this season. We've had a good season, we're number two in points, we've had a bunch of number one qualifiers, it's just we keep getting stuck on race day,” Force said. “That's hard for a driver, crew chief, our entire team because that’s where you really want to excel. We have a closet full of number one hats, but we don't have those race day hats. So I knew we were getting closer. I knew it was right around the corner for us. We knew eventually our luck was gonna turn around. We had a consistent race car all weekend and just made a lot of solid passes down the track”
Brittany Force has been No. 1 at four races in a row. The last Top Fuel driver to be No. 1 qualifier at four consecutive races was Larry Dixon in 2009. She has not won from the top spot in her last 13 tries. Scott Palmer is making his 136th start. Force is 4 - 0 against Palmer in prior events. Palmer had the starting line advantage, but Force had the lead by 330 feet and never trailed from there on for the win. With the round win, Force has now clinched a spot in the Countdown to the Championship.
With a bye in the 2nd round, Brittany faced Steve Torrence in the semi's. Brittany looked strong and pulled out the win over Torrence running a 3.769 ET at 326.24 MPH.
In the finals, Force was matched against Clay Millican who at the end of the day, was unable to get in the way of Force winning the Wally. Force ran a 3.783 ET at 324.75 while Millican ran a 3.830 ET at 288.58 MPH.
It was Force’s first win since 2019 and the 11th of her career.
See the full even recap by Josh Hachat:
https://www.nhra.com/news/2021/brittany-force-breaks-through-grabs-memorable-top-fuel-victory-topeka