GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- A chip on the shoulder can be a useful aid in sports. It has served Leah Pritchett well in her quest to join the elite in NHRA drag racing, and it gives her power against her arch-rival, fellow Top Fuel driver Brittany Force.
Pritchett beat Force three weeks ago at Phoenix in the first all-female Top Fuel final since 1982, and if you want to know how good that made Pritchett feel, you need only see the photo of her smiling at the sky as though she'd just received the secrets of the universe.
The photo was taken right after Pritchett learned that not only had she beaten Force when both were going for their first event title, but she'd done so on a hole shot. That means her quicker reaction time at the lights overcame her dragster's slower time down the track -- a gratifying accomplishment for a driver against any foe.
The NHRA's first race since Phoenix is this weekend's 47th Amalie Oil Gatornationals at historic Gatornationals. Pritchett enters the weekend fifth in the point standings, Force third.
"They asked at Phoenix about this rivalry and whether there would be anything to it," Pritchett said over lunch Thursday. "I said, 'I'm all for it.' We need some flavor in our lives. This sport isn't vanilla. Let's mix it up."
Pritchett says she gets along with Force, a daughter of 16-time Funny Car champion John Force and older sister of Funny Car driver Courtney Force. The rivals are close in age (Pritchett is 27, Brittany Force 29), both from California, both college educated. They go to dinner together occasionally. Their crews have family connections.
But that's where the feel-good vibe ends. Pritchett has a visceral reaction to any suggestion she and Force have slogged up the same rugged path, taken the same hits to the soul or are cut from the same cloth.
"You can't take two more different people the way we've come up," Pritchett says. "I mean, the fact she wanted to be a teacher as her first career choice and drag racer as a backup is a polar opposite of me working my (butt) off to fund myself through racing. To get where I'm at, it wasn't a second choice."
Pritchett is the daughter of a driver, too. But she and Ron Pruett, who set several land speed records on the salt flats of Bonneville, Utah, haven't spoken in several years, she says. Pruett had started Leah and older sister Lindsey in the NHRA's Junior Dragster league when Leah was 8 and later built them a Funny Car for the west coast nostalgia circuit. But Leah says her dad tore her down as much as he supported her.
That's in stark contrast to the support and positive reinforcement the Force women -- including Ashley, who drove a Funny Car until stepping away to start a family a few years ago -- have received from John Force.
"To be honest, the push that has gotten me to where I am is that a good amount of the time we were racing juniors through my teen years, my dad would tell me I wasn't as good as the boys and I'll never make it," Pritchett says. "I'm just being as real as possible, because I feel like people see everything looking nice and neat and 'here we are,' and that's not the way it is."
Brittany Force has heard it said before that the Force women have had it so much easier, and she handles any such swipe with grace. She says John Force made his daughters pay their dues, driving for about three years each in the NHRA Super Comp and Top Alcohol classes. She points to the loss of her sponsor and the hard sell she had to make to land Monster Energy Drink last year to stay in the sport.
Pritchett says none of the Force women have had to experience anything like her having to cold-call on businesses for sponsorship money when she was 15, working at a law firm and auto repair shop to pay her way through Cal State San Bernardino, taking strip club sponsorships en route to her 2010 NHRA Heritage Series Funny Car title, or crewing on a Funny Car team.
"That compared to sitting on the beach and stepping into a Super Comp car when the time is right, that's not the same," Pritchett says. "I'm just saying."
A striking 5-foot-9, Pritchett is not without her own marketing advantages. She is well-spoken, intelligent and comes across hungry. She has won races and set records along the way, including three national events in the NHRA Pro Mod sportsman class in 2011-12, and she became the first woman to break 250 mph in a nostalgia Funny Car in 2009.
She has also earned the respect of three-time Top Fuel champion Shirley Muldowney, who sent her a congratulatory text after the Phoenix win, and that isn't easy to do.
Pritchett is getting her first chance to run the full season. She's with Bob Vandergriff (Jr.) Racing, where she replaced three-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Larry Dixon after helping to land Quaker State sponsorship through contacts she'd been cultivating for years.
Vandergriff, meanwhile, is reeling this week from the sudden death of close friend and longtime supporter Josh Comstock, 46. And Pritchett's husband, Gary Pritchett, the car chief for Top Fuel driver Steve Torrence, is home recovering from second- and third-degree burns to his legs.
"He was cleaning out a fuel tank that still had methanol in it," Pritchett says. "Somebody lit torch and it lit the fumes and the tank, and fire burned like 8-to-10 percent of his body. He's doing better now, but he has lost a lot of weight."
Pritchett says she realizes she may get some backlash for speaking out against the Forces, who collectively have the sport's largest following. They're always among the crowd favorites at Gainesville Raceway, a track that has seen some of the greatest moments in drag racing history.
"Haters are going to hate, and that means I may lose some fans or supporters," Pritchett says. "But if we want to get real, maybe I'll gain some of the people that are hard-working Americans and have a dream but don't know how to find a way to make it happen. Maybe those are the people that are going to be on Team Leah, or whatever this is."
This may only be the beginning of something good.
