The Chargers have moved out of Costa Mesa into a new 14-acre practice facility near LAX they hope will aid their rise under coach Jim Harbaugh.
The winningest driver in motorsports history and the most successful team owner in drag racing has a confession to make.
“I failed as a father, miserably,” John Force says.
Failure and John Force don’t normally appear in the same sentence. The 16-time funny car series champion has collected enough National Hot Rod Assn. trophies to cover a 1,000-foot drag strip. And last year, the four-driver team he heads collected national titles in two divisions, with daughter Brittany winning in top fuel and son-in-law Robert Hight winning in funny car.
But now that he’s reached the top of the mountain — literally, since his palatial mansion, which sprawls across a Yorba Linda hilltop, offers views of Catalina Island as well as the Santa Ana, San Gabriel and Santa Monica mountains — Force is pausing to reflect on what that climb cost him.
He’ll enter his 47th season in a funny car when the NHRA season begins this week at Auto Club Raceway in Pomona. Along the way, he’s made more money than he’ll ever spend, set records that will never be broken and pushed the sport into the mainstream by opening a museum, founding an entertainment division and starring in his own reality show.
But at 68, it’s what Force lost that occupies his thinking.
“I had rough times,” said Force, a father of four daughters from two marriages who missed as many dance recitals and cheerleading competitions as he won races. “It used to be that when dad wins, he walks in the door and says, ‘We’re going to Disneyland tomorrow. Nobody’s going to school.
And then when I’d come home and I was really depressed and things went bad. I drank too much. Had a fit because somebody would say something.
