POMONA, Calif. — John Force would just as easily hand a kid the hat off his head as he would strip down to his underwear to prove he didn’t have any secret car controls.

Ever the showman, ever creating new fans, ever the competitor.

The 76-year-old Force retired last week with 16 NHRA funny car championships and 157 victories to his credit. He announced it in typical John Force fashion with little notice. Few knew his decision or plans prior to a media event that was designed to promote last weekend’s races at Pomona Dragstrip, to talk about daughter Brittany Force’s last race before pausing her career to start a family and John Force Racing driver Justin Prock vying for the funny car title.

“My family, we’ve known and we’ve talked about it many times, and just had not made it public yet,” Brittany Force told me Sunday morning at Pomona. “But he let our teams know about five minutes before we walked on stage. 

“And for our team, it was a little bit of a panic because we weren’t prepared. But I felt like that was the right way to do it. Because that’s John Force. That’s how he does things. No plan. Just throws it all out there.”

[Related: Brittany Force’s Next Chapter: ‘Difficult Saying Goodbye To Something I Love So Much’]

John Force has not raced since crashing at 300 miles an hour in June 2024 at Richmond, where he suffered a traumatic brain injury. He is still recovering but had left the door open to a return before Thursday’s announcement.

“I’ve said so many times, ‘Until this race car kills me, they’re gonna have to drag me out of the seat,’” Force said in his retirement video. “But the truth is, I was dragged out of the seat at Richmond, and they thought it killed me then. So I’m lucky that I’m back walking.”

Force’s legacy will be one of an outgoing personality, the ultimate showman, one of a driver who didn’t come from racing roots and not from money as the son of a trucker. Success didn’t come quickly for Force, who finished second nine excruciating times over 10 years before his first win in 1987 in Montreal. His final win came 37 years later, in 2024, in New Hampshire.

“When he first started racing, he didn’t win a race for years and he never stopped,” four-time top fuel champion Antron Brown said. ” He kept going. And then he got together with [crew chief] Austin Coil, then he started peeling off wins, and he started peeling off championships — and then he stayed the same person.”

For Brown, that is where Force’s inspiration will have the biggest impact.

“He stayed humble even though he was dominant,” Brown said. “And by him staying humble, what that did for me was it showed me his true character, because he never forgot where he came from.

“He worked every race like it was his first race, and he was thankful for being there. He talked to every fan how he wanted people to treat and talk to him. And that’s the hardest thing that you see in life today, is how many people truly treat people how they want to be treated. And that’s John Force.”

By embracing the fan experience, Force was embraced by nearly everyone. Sure, he had his battles on the track. And at one point, he was accused of having traction control — so after another winning one of his elimination rounds in 1995, he unzipped his firesuit on national television and dropped it to his feet to revel just a t-shirt and underpants, indicating to people they wouldn’t find any illegal wires or controls on him as he walked off in his whities.

“There’s not a lot of guys that would do that,” said former teammate and competitor Tony Pedregon, now an NHRA analyst on the FOX telecasts. “Those [flamboyant instances] were some of the things that made John so popular and so loved.”

And unique.

“I don’t know if anybody can emulate [him],” said NHRA team owner and racer Tony Stewart, a three-time NASCAR Cup champion. “John’s just a one-of-a-kind personality. He truly is a larger than life personality. That’s the only way to describe him.”

Pedregon, driving for Force’s organization, broke Force’s streak of 10 consecutive titles in 2003 and then left the team to join his brother, Cruz, who was expanding his team in 2004.

Pedregon points back to 1992 when he battled Cruz for the title and Cruz won in a race where Force bounced off the wall a couple of times and lost by less than a car length.

“Not many drivers, not anyone in their right mind are going to lose traction, hit a wall and then get back on throttle,” Tony Pedregon said. “But that just goes to show you the level of intensity and the competitiveness of John. The majority of the time, that was a good thing for him.”

It showed the no-quit in Force, which is why he still raced into his 70s while also owning his own race team. 

“I always give these speeches on how our sport, the car is only as good as it is, and the driver can only make it worse,” said Ron Capps, whose 76 funny car wins are second only to Force. “It’s s not like I can make up a corner, like Chase [Elliott] misses an apex, and he can make it up the next lap in NASCAR.

“We can’t do that. We’re as good as the car. But he always had something magical with the car.”

That magic was the ability to maybe not think about it too much. That’s what he taught Prock, who has won back-to-back funny car titles. He taught him to stomp on the throttle pedal and go. 

“When you get behind that Christmas tree [lights to signify the start] and you’re intimidated by it, or you’re thinking about trying to be good on it, [he taught me] you only slow yourself down,” Prock said.

“You have to have a clear mind and just keep the process simple.”

That type of advice, helping the young drivers understand how to race and how to get it done both on and off the track, will be part of his legacy.

“When you look back at our sport, there’s going to be this John Force era that set the tone,” Capps said. “He took everything that Snake [Don Prudhomme] and Mongoose [Tom McEwen] and Big Daddy Don Garlits and Shirley Muldowney had built back in the day, the models we played with in Hot Wheels, and he carried the sport and people.

“I just had a conversation with somebody talking about Force, and when they watched, … they sat back with a beer on TV, watched John Force, and his interviews made them feel like they could just go hang out with him. He was just an old truck driver, right?”

The people watching saw someone living out their hopes.

“You’re talking about the guy that lived an American Dream,” Brown said. “He came from driving trucks to driving race cars professionally for a living. And I share the same story where I’m this kid that came from a hard-working family from the septic tank business to live in my dream driving a race car for a living.

“How much more American do you get? You just chase the dream. You keep your head down. And the main thing is you never stop working.”

Where does he get all the energy? That’s something that has dumbfounded even those closest to him.

“That’s just his personality, that’s always how he’s been,” Brittany Force said. “We wonder the same thing. I have nieces and nephews, and they don’t have nearly the amount of energy that he has.

“His energy comes from where his heart’s at, and it’s in this sport. It’s being out here at the racetrack. He loves it so much, and you just see it pour through.”

The teams will continue to race in 2026 without a Force racing full time. Fans can expect to see Force at the track and still promoting the sport that he loves.

“He started from nothing, and he built this whole John Force Racing empire,” Brittany Force said. “You don’t know NHRA drag racing without John Force. And I think it’s because of where he came from. And he carried that in his heart.” 

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.