Southern California drag racer John Force moved to outpatient care weeks after a frightening 300-mph crash that left the 16-time NHRA champ hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury, his family said this week. The 75-year-old Force, who was born in Bell Gardens and lives in Yorba Linda, was back home Monday after 15 days in a Virginia hospital and a stint at a rehabilitation center in Arizona, his family said.
“He finally gets to sleep in his own bed,” daughter Ashley Force Hood said in a statement issued by John Force Racing on Tuesday. Daughter Brittany Force shared an Instagram picture with a snapshot of her father smiling and giving a thumbs up from his hospital bed.
Force was released from the Barrow Neurological Institute, where he had been receiving treatment since early July, according to the statement. While healing at home, he will undergo outpatient treatment as well as speech, occupational, and physical therapy for any remaining short-term memory and cognitive difficulties, according to the statement.”Peace out Phoenix! After 30 days my dad is finally heading home where we will continue outpatient therapy,” Brittany Force posted on Instagram. “These next steps to recovery will definitely be a family effort!”
On June 23, Force sustained a traumatic brain injury, broke his sternum, and hurt his right wrist in an accident during his first-round run in Funny Car eliminations at Virginia Motorsports Park. After his engine burst near the finish line, the car crossed the strip’s centerline and collided into the driver’s side left concrete guard wall. The car then careened back across the track and collided with the opposite wall.
Force, who attended Cerritos College, was conscious and communicating with emergency personnel immediately following the catastrophic incident. An NHRA medical team checked him before airlifting him from the circuit.
Force, who won his 157th NHRA race in New Hampshire this year, was critically injured in a 2007 incident in Ennis, Texas. His impressive NHRA Funny Car career began in 1978. Force won his first NHRA title in 1990, and he went on to win ten more between 1990 and 2000. Force won ten Funny Car championships in a row from 1993 to 2002.
Brittany, 37, has won two NHRA Drag Racing Series Top Fuel dragster championships. Daughters Courtney Fallon Force-Rahal and Ashley Corinne Force Hood both raced in the NHRA Funny Car Series.
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