Courtney Force

Winning is in the Genes

When your dad and your oldest sister keep setting records and re-writing drag racing history, following in their 17-inch wide tire tracks might seem like a very intimidating prospect.

Not for 21-year-old Courtney Force, the youngest of 14-time Funny Car Champion John Force’s four daughters and the one he identified early-on as the most likely to follow him into the family racing business.

In fact, after winning her first race last year at Seattle, Wash., and earning runner-up honors at the season-ending Auto Club Finals at Pomona, Calif., she is poised to make history of her own this year at the wheel of a BrandSource A/Fuel dragster prepared by veteran tuner Jerry Darien.

She also scored off the track last season when she was named the Top Agent in the Fiesta Movement, a summer-long program designed to introduce the 2011 Ford Fiesta. Ford Motor Company designated 100 “agents” nationwide who drove and talked about the Fiesta on their MySpace sites, the YouTube channel and Twitter.

Along with her mother Laurie and sister Brittany, Courtney earned her competition driver’s license in 2005. She’s been on course to a full-time racing career ever since, first in Super Comp, where she apprenticed for three years, and the last three seasons in the Top Alcohol Dragster division.

Courtney actually has followed sister Ashley’s career course. Both were cheerleaders at Esperanza High School (Yorba Linda, Calif.); both took elective courses in auto shop and welding; and both majored in Communications at Cal State Fullerton, the university from which Courtney will graduate this year.

Statuesque like her mother, Courtney was one of the stars of Driving Force, a real-life TV series that last aired on A&E Network in 2007.