POMONA — It’s been a tough year for the John Force Racing team in the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series.

As the series heads to the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals this weekend at Pomona Dragstrip, the John Force Racing team has reason to both reflect and rejoice. John Force returned with his drivers and teams for races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway two weeks ago for the first time since his racing accident in June left him with a serious brain injury.

Force, the face of the team and the face of the series as a 16-time NHRA champion for nearly 40 years, suffered a devastating crash in Richmond, Virginia, and spent months in hospitals and trauma centers recovering.

Drivers missed races. For a while, the team spent more time with Force in hospitals than racetracks. It took Force, 75, several weeks to get home to Yorba Linda and recover.

In difficult times, two drivers of John Force Racing found reasons to celebrate. Her daughter, Brittany Force, a Top Fuel driver for the NHRA series, won her first race in more than two years at Las Vegas.

John Force Racing’s Funny Car driver Austin Prock also won in Las Vegas and is closing in on his first title in the division.

Brittany Force said after the races in Las Vegas that this was “one of the biggest wins in our camp.”

This year has been a bit of a double-edged sword race, Prock said.

“We went through the emotions of going through John’s accident, which was a terrible time of the season. We’ve had a lot of success, too. It was a little of both. “This year things were really good and things were really bad,” Prock said.

“You just have to roll with the punches. Life is hard sometimes. We had to manage as best we could. “I felt like it made us all a little stronger.”

Prock won for the eighth time this season in Funny Car. All he has to do to capture the Funny Car championship, the first of his career, is a successful qualifying session at Pomona.

“The championship is a big thing to celebrate considering what we’ve been through,” Prock said.

“The team still sticks together and gets the job done. I think that’s something to be proud of.”

Brittany Force said it was a special moment for her father to watch her win at the track in Las Vegas for the first time in two years.

“Having my dad here for the first time since the accident wasn’t about pressure, it was just more heart behind every single person on the team,” Brittany Force said after Monday’s race in Las Vegas. “We always want to go out here and win, but for him to be here this weekend, after everything he’s been through, there was definitely more heart behind it. We wanted to put him in the winner’s circle.”

This was the 17th career victory for Brittany Force in Top Fuel and her first since the fall races in Las Vegas in 2022.

“We have been putting these together since the countdown started and we were seeing this progress in heats 1 and laps on race day. We knew it was coming,” Brittany Force said. “We knew we were getting close, and we knew we were getting close, and I had a good feeling about Vegas. “We’ve had success here in the past and it’s one of my favorite tracks on the circuit and my whole family has been here.”

“My dad was here. I had a good feeling and that’s what our team needed to come here and win. We always stayed positive, we always had confidence in ourselves, but it hurts to go two seasons without winning.”

John Force Racing teams have momentum heading into the NHRA Finals in Pomona. For Prock, it will be a fitting end to a rewarding, if challenging, season.