It may be Funny Car, but 4th NHRA title is serious business for Robert Hight
It’s been a few years, but Robert Hight is back on top.
The California native won his third NHRA Funny Car championship in 2019, but has had to wait a few years before he’d be able to contend for the title once again.
COVID-19 prevented Hight from competing in all but two races in 2020. He then won only two races upon his return to the sport in 2021 and finished a disappointing eighth in the standings.
But now, Hight looks to be racing towards his fourth title. He already has six wins this season and a 250-point lead in the Funny Car standings.
Of course, this lead will be virtually eliminated once the Countdown to the Championship - NHRA’s six-race playoffs - begins following this weekend’s U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. But Hight is rightly proud of his John Force Racing team’s performance so far this season, and has high hopes for the Countdown.
Robert Hight. Photo courtesy NHRA.
“This is what you dream about every year,” Hight said in an exclusive interview with Auto Racing Digest. “Sometimes it’s a far-fetched dream with the competition level in Funny Car. I think it’s tougher than it's ever been to even win a race. But we’ve managed to get six of them and have been in some other finals.”
After missing most of 2020, Hight said that last year was a very humbling season. The team expected to return to the performance that it had in 2019, but perhaps after a year off they were caught off-guard.
“In 2021 we all had hopes of returning in the form we were in and it didn’t happen,” Hight said. “No excuses, but I think we tried a lot of things last year that didn’t work and it hurt our performance.
“But you also learn in the long run from things that don’t work. You can still get better when you try something that doesn’t work. We really spent the winter focusing on where we need to go in the future and what we did wrong last year.
"We came out swinging and won the first two races. I think we all learned that maybe we took things for granted and that it was [going to be] easy last year. We learned real quick that it wasn’t.”
The team’s progress over the offseason clearly paid off, and now Hight looks ahead to the Countdown. He may have been the man to beat all year, but with the upcoming points reset, there’s no time to rest.
“You've got to stay focused and humble and not get sidetracked,” Hight said of the Countdown. ”Unfortunately, you can have an unbelievable regular season and win all the races. But if you don’t do it in the last six, it means nothing.”
Hight isn’t the only JFR driver putting together a phenomenal season, though. On the Top Fuel side of things, Brittany Force has four wins of her own and leads the standings. The duo has the chance to win both the Top Fuel and Funny car championships for the team - a feat they did once prior in 2017.
“This is probably the best four-car team that we’ve ever fielded,” Hight said.
While Hight is hopeful to clinch his fourth Funny Car title in the season-ending race at Pomona this November (if not potentially sooner if he dominates the Countdown), he’d also love to win a fourth U.S. Nationals this weekend in Indianapolis.
“It’s the biggest race of the year,” Hight said. “It’s our Daytona 500 or Indy 500.
“(Top Fuel racing legend 'Big Daddy') Don Garlits told me one time ‘you just won Indy. You can retire now.’ That’s kind of the mindset of how important that race is to win. For us, it would just cap off a perfect regular season and give us some momentum heading into the Countdown.
“You win the biggest race of the year and you’ll be riding a high going into that first race [of the Countdown] in Redding, Pennsylvania. I think it is important to come out of Indy with some momentum and you always want to win the biggest race of the year.
"Driver’s careers are measured by championships and how many times they've won Indy. I’m fortunate to have been able to do both. I want another of each.”