John Force to debut state of the art Camaro Funny Car this weekend at Topeka - MotorSportsTalk

John Force has a brand new body.

No, he hasn’t morphed into the $6 Million Dollar Man, nor has the 67-year-old been working out more than usual.

Rather, Force will have a brand new body on his Funny Car for this weekend’s NHRA Kansas Nationals at Heartland Park Topeka in Kansas.

Force will debut a high tech, state of the art 2016 Chevrolet Camaro SS Funny Car at Topeka, it was announced Tuesday morning at a press conference in Brownsburg, Indiana.

Chevrolet and 16-time NHRA champion John Force unveil the all-new 2016 Camaro SS Funny Car Tuesday, May 17, 2016 in Brownsburg, Indiana. The new Funny Car body is the first based on the sixth-generation Camaro SS. Force will race the new Funny Car this weekend at the NHRA Kansas Nationals in Topeka, Kansas. Forces teammates Courtney Force and Robert Hight will introduce new Camaro SS Funny Cars later this season. (Photo by Eric Meyer for Chevy Racing) — Here’s the new Chevrolet Camaro body that John Force unveiled Tuesday.

What makes this new body – which is the first based upon the sixth-generation Camaro SS – so special is it is aero-optimized for greater downforce and stability.

The record-holding 16-time NHRA Funny Car champion will be the first driver on his team to have the new body. Daughter and teammate Courtney Force and son-in-law and John Force Racing president Robert Hight will also have similar bodies, but those won’t debut until later this season.

“I started my career in a Chevrolet and I couldn’t be more excited to put this new Camaro SS Funny Car on the track,” John Force said in a media release. “With all the assistance from Chevrolet, it not only looks great, it’s designed to perform better than anything we’ve had before, with a shape that should help us get down the track quicker and with greater stability.”

The new body went through extensive computational analysis and wind tunnel testing to help give it significantly improved airflow.

The Funny Car body sits atop a motor and chassis capable of reaching 10,000 horsepower and to accelerate from 0 up to 330 mph in less than four seconds on a 1,000-foot dragstrip.

Borrowing a page of sorts from NASCAR, the new Camaro Funny Car body has a new front splitter designed to move air over and around it to keep the vehicle glued to the track with added downforce.

It also has two new “burst” (also known as “blow-out”) panels that “relieve underbody pressure to help keep the body on the chassis in the event of an engine failure/explosion.

“The 2016 Camaro has been a great success in the showroom and Chevrolet is proud to contribute to its debut in NHRA’s Funny Car class,” said Jim Campbell, Chevrolet U.S. vice president of performance vehicles and motorsports. “It joins the 2016 COPO Camaro in the Sportsman classes, strengthening Chevrolet’s presence in drag racing, which dates back nearly 60 years.”

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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