Tucson Dragway

Austin Coil wore that amused countenance he seems to have about him. His attire was avant-garde funky, certainly a departure from his crisp Castrol shirt and work pants. He wore a black shirt, print tie, dressy trousers, and tennis shoes. He was without his trademark toothpick that he called a "pacifier" after he gave up cigar-puffing.

"They said 'business casual," Coil offered with a shrug.

That's almost an oxymoron for John Force's crew chief. Business usually is not casual for the Funny Car team with three Ford Mustangs. But it was that evening, when Force celebrated the grand opening of his gleaming-new 40,000-square-foot shop in Brownsburg, Ind., and was inducted into Ford's Mustang Hall of Fame that includes Carroll Shelby, Jack Roush, and Lee Iacocca.

Rewards might be glamorous, but demands are high at John Force Racing. Coil is a key factor in setting that tough standard that yielded 13 NHRA championships. Force has 12 as a driver -- five of which came when he owned a one-car operation -- and one with a multi-car team.

Coil, the mechanical magician from Chicago, didn't appear at Force's Southern California shop in 1985 with instant success. He had guided Frank Hawley to seven national-event titles and two Funny Car championships. But Force, who had struggled through 34 races before that, ran his total to 65 before winning his first final round, against Ed "The Ace" McCullloch, at Montreal June 28, 1987, and stood in the winners circle with Dick La Haie and Bob Glidden.

Co-crew chief Bernie Fedderly said Force "was trying to build his image" in the first few years with Coil. "We really hit our stride later on. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you get a bunch of people all pulling in the same direction and you put the egos on the back burner a little. John's a great motivator, and he has put together the right group of people. The chemistry is excellent.

"Austin in particular has an extremely inquisitive mind. Face it," Fedderly said, "his record speaks for itself. Coil has 120 national-event victories to Force's NHRA-record 113. Fedderly added that Coil "is probably the brainiest of all the crew chiefs out here. He certainly ranks at the top of the pile."

Coil possesses a detached quality, a more regal bearing than the other three crew chiefs just below him on the John Force Racing totem pole. His demeanor is marked not exactly by the mellow assurance of Bernie Fedderly, the warm and ready smile of John Medlen, or the quiet contemplation of Jimmy Prock.

If Fedderly could be likened to a steady and gentle guide dog, Medlen to a loveable and loyal spaniel, and Prock to a serious watchdog, then Coil would be a cat. Coil curls up independently in his own world, analyzing and shooting laser looks that imply, "I'm in charge. I'll move when I'm ready."

For Force, Coil always has been the cat's meow. That's why when Coil made the move from running his own two-time NHRA Funny Car championship team to join Force's one-car operation in 1985, he named his terms. Force paid for Coil to fly to the races, while he, the former long-haul driver, commandeered the team trailer wherever they raced.

"That was part of the agreement for me to come work here. It wasn't exactly a given," Coil said. "One of the first deals I made was I don't travel in the truck. I don't wash, polish, lift, carry, push, tote, nothin'. That's what I do, and if you want to hire me for that, we can negotiate. If you don't, I'll just stay and run my own team."

Truth is, he and Force complete each other. "You know, I have no talent at all for the things John's best at," Coil said. "So it makes a good marriage, because we really need each other.

"I had my own team," he said, referring to the Chi-Town Hustler entry that Hawley drove to back-to-back series titles in 1982 and '83. "And I basically went broke. So I don't know how to run that side of the business. The driver kind of has to be the guy who does the PR. And guess what -- when you've got a hired driver, he's looking out for himself, kind of like how Tony won and run off. Well, so did my driver. We won a couple of times and he run off."

Said Force, "This has become a money game, and that's sad, because there are so many talented people in racing that don't have the money. They were so busy learning how to run a car that they forgot how to get money. Austin Coil could not find the money. I could not tune a car. Austin Coil tuned the car and I found the money. That's why Coil is my best friend, yet I never see him. Then how could he be my best friend? Because he is the last guy I see before that car goes down that race track."

Force and Coil are like that longtime married couple, comfortable with each other beyond explanation. Force's conversation always drifts back to the family he has made, not by blood but by nitromethane. Coil takes care of him, while he broods about his age, about Del Worsham and Whit Bazemore and Ron Capps, about To Alcohol Dragster driver daughter Ashley's learning curve, about his future, about money, money, money.

Grinding and hustling is all Force knows. Coil said Force occasionally will ask if he has time to go for a motorcycle ride. "I show up, ready to go, and he changes his mind. That's probably happened 20 times," Coil said. "I believe John's gone riding with me probably three times in all the times we've had motorcycles and known each other. I probably go riding once a month, whenever I can fit it in. That's my primary recreation."

Force's seems to be chasing sponsorship dollars. "I don't have any time. I've got to find money. That is what I do seven days a week," the 12-time champion said. "Every waking hour of my life is spent looking for money. If I have breakfast with my kids on Sunday morning, I am thinking how to get more money and how to win a race."

Said Coil, "I'm not like that. That's why he's got all those zeroes in his bank account and I don't. He's always worried, and he's always working."

Coil peppers his dialogue with the words "simple" and "reasonable" They seem out of place, though, in an environment in which nothing is simple and Force's often-manic, always-intense personality hardly seems reasonable. That disturbs Coil, but he knows he's powerless to change it. "The only thing I'm sure of," he said, "is he's less happy than I wish. He's so driven by the fear of failure that he rarely has a moment of peace. Obviously it's not reasonable. But how much is enough? A little more. To John, the next likely place is where you don't want to be."

His acceptance of that almost makes him a co-dependent. Force asked him recently if he tires of the seven-days-a-week routine. "What are our options?" Coil shot back. "It's the only life we know."

Coil even talks about his relationship with Force like an old married man: "He drives me crazy all the time, about like my wife. She drives me crazy, too. Either one of them has a limited time that I can take it. I kind of switch back and forth."

About five years ago at Maple Grove Raceway, near Reading, Pa., Coil instructed Force to be quiet for a minute, promising that he was going to do something brilliant. That got the attention of the normally excitable Force, who sat silent, awaiting Coil's miracle. Finally, Coil declared, "I did something brilliant -- I got you to shut up for a minute."

Coil's predecessor, Bill Schultz, had a way of dealing with Force's behavior. "He used to tell him to go grind a bunch of clutch disks," Coil said. "He'd spend all day grinding them all as best he could. And Schultz would say, 'You did a pretty nice job. Now clean all this up and throw it away.' " When Force asked why, Schultz told him, "It was something to keep you out of my way." The way Coil laughed, he clearly understood and almost wished he had thought of it himself.

For Coil, his racing family literally is his family. Of his kin, he said, "I don't have any anymore. The only living family I have any contact with is on my wife's side. My mom and dad have both been gone for years. I didn't have any brothers and sisters. Christmas is real simple for me. I've got to buy a present for John and one for my wife."

Fedderly said Coil "is always looking at the next step and adapting," and that goes for his Christmas shopping excursion for his alter ego. "It's pretty tough," Coil said of the assignment. "I think the favorite is a sword that's about five feet long, a big, fancy, shiny sword that was engraved with something about the 2003 championship or something like that. It's in a case, hanging on the wall. You have to find something unique. I got him an Elvis Presley guitar once. He liked that a lot. It's in a prominent place in his collection."

Force's "collection" is something that amuses Coil. Force claims to be fond of antiques, just as his huge heart overflows with sentimental memories of the "good old days" of racing. And Force, slogging through this year's mid-season rule changes, has said the reason he and Coil have been figuring out how to adjust and win races is "we're old match-racers."

Coil, whose Chi-Town Hustler endured 96 events in its busiest match-racing year, pooh-poohed that idea. He said, "When 10 years go by, there have been enough hanges to where not much you've learned in the past applies. I'm pretty well over the old days."

Acknowledging that Fedderly is the genuine antique expert in the organization, Coil said, "Most of John's antiques are something Bernie laughs at. John buys something that was made yesterday, a copy of something old."
Something old does not interest Coil. "I don't own any antiques. I had plenty of old things growing up, so now I like to have new stuff," he said.
Another NHRA Funny Car championship -- a shiny, new 13th one with John Force -- could be his next acquisition.

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