Dearborn, Mich. — Now in her third year in the NHRA Funny Car series, Ashley Force Hood and her team have become a force with which to reckon with. Force Hood, who won earlier this year at the O’Reilly Spring Nationals in Baytown, Texas, and her crew chief, Dean Guido Antonelli, talk about what makes their team so strong and how she has grown as a driver in her two-plus seasons on in the series.
ASHLEY FORCE HOOD – CASTROL GTX FORD MUSTANGHOW HAS THE TEAM CHANGED FROM THE FIRST YEAR?“The first year was all about learning all of our jobs. Each guy had to learn what they do on the car, get it fine-tuned and learn how to do it quickly between rounds. That’s not an easy thing to do, especially when you know mistakes are made, and you learn from those mistakes, but that’s all part of it. I think that was our first year.
“Our second year was kind of fine tuning that. Fortunately, we had the same group of guys; only one or two guys were different, so that really makes a big difference in the fact that that you know it’s the same basic group, they’ve built on what they’ve learned the first year. The second year we were still working on those same things, and this year I think Ron [Douglas] and Guido have really pushed the guys to remember that it’s all in the details. It’s not just doing the job but how perfect you can do it, and double-checking everything. That makes a big difference. A lot of rounds are lost just because of something so simple and easy, that it was a mistake that someone didn’t double-check something. Our team, we rarely have those issues. If we lose a round it’s because the temperature has changed or maybe I’ve got it out of the groove. It’s never something with the crew guys, or a technicality that the crew guys made a mistake on, and that just gives us so much more of a chance, I think, at doing well when you don’t have to think about those little minor details. They’ve really worked hard to do that and they actually double-check each other. I actually see it when we go to warm up, one guy checks something, the other guy checks the same thing and that makes a big difference I believe. It all adds up.”
ONLY HAVING ONE OR TWO CHANGES TO THE CREW AND KNOWING THEIR ATTENTION TO DETAIL MUST BE A MAJOR COMFORT.“It is. It makes a big difference when you get someone new. Even if they’ve come from a different team they’re going to learn things differently or have a different way of doing things. You have to re-teach them. You have to get them use to our routine and working with this group of people, and that takes some time to get those kinks worked out. Fortunately, our one new guy, Matt, came from Dad’s team, so we learn from that team, too, and his routine probably didn’t change very much; he knows how it goes.
“Our other new guy came from Del Worsham’s team, so they both had a lot of experience, so we weren’t trying to teach a brand-new person, we were just fine-tuning them to how our team runs.
“I really think you see how good my guys get along and I think it makes a difference when something does go wrong, or if there’s a mistake, even if they’re not quite sure. I don’t know that much about working on cars, but I know it can be nerve-wracking if you think that you’ve made a mistake. Do you say something or do you not? These guys are so comfortable with Guido and Ron they’ll go and they’ll tell them. It totally makes me more comfortable because I know they’re willing to take getting into trouble to make sure the car’s right. I never think they would let anything pass on accident with this car, and I hope that all teams run like that, but you never know how teams run. You’re in a rush and suddenly you realize something, same thing with me and my car. I’m always worried and I double-check a hundred times, because I’m like, ‘What if I go up to start my car and one of my arm restraints isn’t hooked in? What do I do?’ You know you can’t make that pass when you know there’s something that is really wrong, or my helmet is not strapped on right or whatever it is, so to keep that from happening I check everything about 10 times. That’s the same with the guys, it’s not about getting me in trouble, it’s about giving me a safe car and its really about making Ron and Guido proud of them. They’re very close with them, and they really want them to be happy with them and I think it makes our guys double-check more than maybe people on other teams who don’t care so much what their crew chiefs think or are scared of their crew chief. That’s not the way we are in our camp."
"We’re all very close. If there is a mistake, whether it’s me on my part, or the crew, we’re willing for the good of the team to go up announce the mistake and make the right change. Luckily it doesn’t happen very often and I think it’s because we all double-check everything so much. At least we know we’re all on the same page. We know what we need to do and if something’s not right, we know we need to fix it.”
To read the rest of the interview visit: http://www.fordracing.com/news/detail/?article=36335
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