Congratulations Ashley!
On Sunday, April 27, 2008, Ashley chalked up her first victory at the NHRA Southern Nationals to become the first female driver to win a national Funny Car event.She powered her Castrol GTX Ford Mustang in a run of 4.827 seconds at 320.36 mph at Atlanta Dragway, smoking all competitors including her dad, John Force.

She told the Associated Press, "I'm just happy to win an event. That was the main thing. Being a female, that's exciting as far as the records and everything, but my team, we just wanted to get our first win. We went a whole year last year and got close a few times. To finally get it done, we're just so excited."

Said John, "I'm proud of her. She did her job. She didn't do anything stupid at the starting line. ... I love her."

News Update:
In September of 2007, Ashley Force was voted the winner of the first annual "Hottest Athlete" poll on AOL Sports. Ashley beat out quarterback hunk Tom Brady, and fellow female driver Danica Patrick for the honor. Check out the Ashley Force photo gallery to see pictures of this driver on and off the track.

Racing background:
After graduating from Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School, she spent two seasons in the entry-level Super Comp class and three more in Top Alcohol Dragster before becoming just the 10th woman in NHRA history to earn a license to compete in the Funny Car division. In Top Alcohol, she won five NHRA national events including the biggest event in the sport, the 2004 U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis, Ind.

Notable: Ashley was a Top 10 finisher in national points in each of her three seasons in Top Alcohol Dragster. When she won the 2004 World Finals at Pomona, Calif., she shared the winners' circle with her dad as the first father-and-daughter champions in the history of the NHRA series. Now, she has moved up to race against her father at the wheel of one of the most challenging vehicles on the planet – an 8,000 horsepower Funny Car.

Ashley is trying to become the first woman to advance to the final round in the Funny Car division, the first woman to win a race, the first to qualify No. 1 and the first to earn a Top 10 finish. Despite the fact that she chose "auto shop" and "welding" as two of her elective courses in high school, Ashley's interest in the "family business" came as a compete shock to her father, 14-time NHRA Funny Car Champion John Force. Nevertheless, three years after earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cal State-Fullerton, the former high school cheerleader is being hailed as a future star of the NHRA series and a possible successor to her father.

Despite the demands of her racing career, Ashley still finds time to indulge her passion for movie-making. Among her productions was "The Bi-Polar Express," a takeoff on Dickens'; "A Christmas Carol" in which her father was cast as Ebenezer Scrooge.