Note from Erica

Hi, I'm Erica Ortiz.  I'm a drag racer like Ashley, and a big fan of hers.  She just got voted winner of the first annual "Hottest Athlete" poll on AOL Sports.

Like Ashley, I'm doing my best to compete in a man's world, and have broken a few records of my own, and with PNN am doing a weekly reality show, check it out:

http://horsepowerandheels.pnn.com

Ashley named hottest athlete

Posted: September 19, 2007

Ashley Force has been named the winner of the first annual "Hottest Athlete" poll on AOL Sports.

The Web site's users voted on the best-looking men and women in sports over several weeks and National Hot Rod Association star Force beat out New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and fellow motorsports competitor Danica Patrick for the honor.

Force, the daughter of longtime NHRA star John Force, spent two seasons in the entry-level Super Comp class and three more in the Top Alcohol Dragster class before becoming the 10th woman in NHRA history to earn a license to compete in the Funny Car division.

"While competing in Top Alcohol, she won five NHRA national events including the biggest event in the sport, the 2004 U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. Force and her father made racing history in April when they became the first father and daughter to race against each other.

Ashley won the race and advanced to the semifinals, where she tied for the highest ever Funny Car event finish for a female.

Turning Pro

  2007-01-19T12:00:24-05:00 Conference Call with Ashley & John Force It was announced during a press conference at John Force Racing headquarters that Ashley Force will turn pro this season and drive a Ford Mustang Funny Car for John Force Racing with sponsorship from Castrol, Auto Club of Southern California,...

Force Car Given to Daughter

We've seen men named Earnhardt and Andretti build auto racing empires with an eye on the horizon, trying to picture the day when one of their sons would go zooming by.

John Force did the same over the last two decades, but with a twist: On Tuesday, the biggest name in the drag-racing game handed the keys to one of the family cars to his 24-year-old daughter, Ashley.

"A lot of people want me to say, 'I'll kick dad's butt,'" Ashley said over the telephone from California, taking a break from her daylong media blitz. "Not so fast.

"I've been around long enough to know he's won dozens of races he had no business winning. So the only thing I'll say about that is I've learned from the best."

Pause.

"But I've seen him acting all goofy in a robe and slippers, too," she laughed. "So maybe he won't seem quite as intimidating to me as he does to a lot of guys out here."

The 2007 drag-racing season opens Feb. 8 in Pomona, Calif., and ends there in early November. Somewhere in between, at one of the nearly two dozen tracks where the NHRA Powerade Series puts down stakes for the weekend, 14-time series winner and defending champion John Force and rookie Ashley will wind up waiting at the same traffic light.

Once it turns green, each will be trying to keep a funny car traveling at speeds over 300 mph glued to the center line of the quarter-mile road stretched out before them. They will be part of the four-car team John Force owns, but they won't be teammates, at least not for the 4.5 or so seconds it takes to reach the finish line.

"The tough thing is, when I look at her in the cockpit, those are the same fierce little eyes I'd see when we put her on a tricycle the first time," John Force said. "She's not a yeller and screamer like me. She handles pressure a lot different than I do."

When Ashley won her first big race two years ago in Indianapolis, still competing on the NHRA's Triple-A circuit, John got so emotional he ran behind the grandstand and threw up.

"By the time I found Ashley, she was sitting there all calm," he recalled. "She just looked at me and said, 'I did like you always told me: Step on the gas when you see amber, and either you win or you don't.'"

Force is 57, but he won't be retiring anytime soon. Not only does he have expectations to meet and sponsors to satisfy for five more years, but now he's also trying to build an audience for a real-life comedy series on the A&E network called "Driving Force."

It's a weekly, wacky, half-hour look at the man who planned on having sons struggling to groom three daughters to run his empire instead younger sisters, Brittany and Courtney, both plan on following Ashley's lead in the next few years.

"So if I'm going to stay in the game and on top long enough for that to happen," Force said with some resignation, "somewhere down the line I'm going to have to beat Ashley."

Ashley is hardly a pioneer in one sense. Three women had reached drag racing's winner's circle even before Shirley Muldowney began regularly clocking male rivals in the 1970s and early 1980s, inspiring "Heart Like A Wheel," the first movie made about a drag racer of either sex. And last season, Melanie Troxel was good enough to nearly duplicate Muldowney's last series championship title a quarter-century ago.

On the other hand, the John Force-Ashley Force duel will almost certainly mark the first time a father and daughter have competed against each other in pro sports. And in what is definitely a sign of the times, the story didn't even dominate the day's racing headlines, let alone the entire sports section.

Part of it, no doubt, was because NASCAR champion and broadcaster Benny Parsons died the same day. Another part had to do with drag racing's niche status. And for sheer man-bites-dog quality, the Force family announcement was competing with 72-year-old James Hylton, who returned to the Daytona 500 more than four decades after he first raced there o try and qualify again.

Even more telling, though, is how accustomed we've become to women in general and superstars' daughters in particularmaking their marks in what were once men-only pursuits. Laila Ali dominates women's boxing the way her more famous father once did on the men's side. In the WNBA, Cheryl Ford delivers points and rebounds with the same reliability that earned her dad, Karl Malone, his NBA nickname, "The Mailman."

Like those two, Ashley Force has been groomed for success. She spent some of her childhood hanging out at tracks, chose auto shop over home economics in high school, then studied business and marketing while getting her degree from Cal State-Fullerton.

And she is arriving at the right time, as the NHRA unveils its own playoff series, called "Countdown to the Championship," in 2007.

When she started competing, John Force saw to it that Ashley had topflight teachers, equipment and crews. That influence helped explain her quick success on the track, despite racing part time. But he claims no credit for the quick way she charms sponsors and the media, nor her being good-looking enough to stop traffic.

"Like her temperament," John Force said, "that's something she gets from her mother."

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org