With 16 championships and 157 victories, John Force built one of the greatest legacies in NHRA history. His daughter Brittany followed in his footsteps, carving out a successful career of her own and becoming a Top Fuel champion in 2017 and 2022. But after 13 years of racing, her future behind the wheel suddenly began to appear blurry.
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Brittany’s family plans and her father’s horrific 2024 crash in Virginia made her reconsider her entire career.
“This is the year 2024. We’ll wrap it up here, and this is a good time to say goodbye and finish my season out and see what’s around the corner for me, see what’s next for me. And then we came into our countdown, you know, the last final races, and I was so not ready,” Britanny said on the Sons and Daughters podcast.
For over a decade, she traveled from track to track week after week and built a career that included two Top Fuel championships. But in 2024, she decided to give priority to her personal life.
Brittany got married in November that year, and they had begun discussing the possibility of starting a family. She knew that continuing a full-time racing career would make that difficult. She previously watched her sisters, Ashley Force Hood and Courtney Force, walk away from their own successful driving careers to have kids. Fellow NHRA star Leah Pruett also stepped out of her dragster in 2024 for the same reason.
Plus, the incident involving her father a few months ago made her question her racing dreams even further.
On June 23, 2024, John crashed at the NHRA Virginia Nationals when his Funny Car engine exploded at more than 300 mph, and his car slammed into both track walls. The drag racing legend suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result.
John’s crew disclosed a week after the incident that he had not opened his eyes until day five of his hospital stay and had been unable to react to orders for four days after the impact. Brittany immediately stepped away from her own race car, skipping the Norwalk event to spend weeks by his hospital bed.
He had to spend a year under doctors’ care and eventually step away from racing at the end of 2025.
For Brittany, the aftermath was impossible to separate from her own future in the sport. She spent weeks with her father in a hospital in Richmond before his treatment continued in Arizona and eventually back home in Pomona. Watching him recover forced her to think about whether racing was still worth the risk.
She initially believed 2024 was the perfect time to retire. However, seeing her father recover better than expected reminded Brittany how deeply she still loved competing. She ultimately delayed her retirement and returned for one final, record-breaking campaign in 2025 before stepping away to focus on motherhood.
By the end of that 2025 season, John officially called it a career as well. After 17 months of medical rehab, the 16-time champion announced his own retirement in November 2025. Despite regaining his ability to walk, Force admitted he did not want to risk another head injury, bluntly acknowledging that the Richmond crash almost killed him.
Brittany, despite the difficulties and life-changing moments she has gone through, has refused to completely close the door on a return to NHRA.
“Maybe we go down this road and kids aren’t in the picture for us, and then I’ll be right back in, jumping in my car,” she added on the podcast.
For now, though, Brittany is embracing a slower life.