The number adorns the wing of Force's Chevrolet Top Fuel dragster, which she steered to the 2022 Top Fuel title in the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series. The championship – the second of her career – came on the strength of a career-high five victories and 10 No. 1 qualifying efforts. 

The group that works on the car is a close-knit collection of individuals who share a common goal, but who also are genuine friends off the track. A quick look at any of the team members' Instagram accounts reveals them celebrating birthdays together, exploring the local areas as they crisscross the country, and generally just hanging out.

"We're very lucky that we choose to hang out with each other outside of the racetrack," says Force, a native of Yorba Linda, California. "We all get along and we like hanging out together. In the world of NHRA drag racing you're in and out of an airport every other weekend, you're in a different hotel every other weekend, you live out of a suitcase. You leave your family behind, you leave your friends behind to go have this lifestyle so these guys are the ones I'm closest to. They're my racing family and they're my friends."

Not only is Grubnic responsible for tuning decisions in his role as crew chief, he also acts as a coach, teacher and sometimes therapist for the group.

"The most important piece of this whole puzzle is our people and that pretty much is in anything, whether it be in the corporate world or in racing," he says. "You've got to surround yourself with quality people and if you don't have that you won't succeed."

His initial objective each week is to ensure everyone is in the proper headspace.

"The first thing I do when I come to an event is feel the pulse of the crew," he says. "If there's any sort of tension or anything I get everybody together and I'll poke them until I get it out of them. It's imperative that we have a positive attitude. It's imperative that everybody wants to jump off a cliff for each other. That's what I work at very hard, just as much as I work on getting that car to run. It is imperative that we have that as a group."

Grubnic has headed up the team since the 2019 season, with several of his crew members following him from across the NHRA pits from a competing Top Fuel operation. The majority of Force's old crew (with whom she won her first title in 2017) had likewise shifted to another team in the proverbial "silly season."

Force admits to feeling more than a twinge of uncertainty as she met the new group that would prepare her nitromethane-powered rocketship to travel 1,000 feet at speeds greater than 330 mph -- in less than four seconds.

She soon learned, however, the work ethic and commitment her new team brought to the JFR outfit.

"Pretty quickly I got to know these guys really well and the way that they worked together under David Grubnic was something I'd never seen before," Force says.

Narciso Bravo began working in NHRA as a volunteer 13 years ago and has been with JFR since the summer of 2015. He is a native of San Luis Rio Colorado in Sonora, Mexico, and also grew up in Tucson, Arizona. 

Bravo is the team's clutch specialist, a position he worked for 10 years to achieve. He finally reached his goal for the 2020 season, but after the first two events of the year the team went dormant.

Now he's living out his dream, and the excitement of the sport is what keeps him looking forward to each race.

"It's like you get some new parts for your car and you can't wait to wake up the next day and put them on, that similar amount of excitement is working on this thing," he explains. "If I wasn't on this team, if I was going to watch one car out here it would probably be this one. It's just exciting. It's like, ‘What are they gonna do? How fast are they gonna go?'"

Bravo says the team members are like his brothers and, to a person, the team speaks of the importance of pulling in the same direction to achieve success in terms of race wins and championships.

"It's about the cause, not the applause," Bravo says.

That thought is reiterated by Matt Covault, a native of Anna, Ohio, who handles superchargers for the team. He is another longtime Grubnic crew member, having linked up with his operation during Covault's first year in the sport in 2015.

"If you've got everybody pulling in a different direction, the car doesn't move," he says. "If everyone's pulling on the same rope, you get where you're going."

Like many of his teammates, the team's ability to jell from driver to crew chief to crew members is what kept Covault loyal to JFR throughout the uncertainty of the pandemic. He also notes that the team is fiercely protective of Force, but also embraces her ability to pitch in and work alongside each of the crew. 

"When you have a group of people that work well together and you know everyone gets along and it meshes well you want to keep that going," he says. "I think that's what brought everybody back. That's definitely what brought me back."