Scott's death is tragic and is a gut wrencher to all drag racers. His father is a legend in the sport and Scott was well on his way. But, lets not blame NHRA. NHRA has, since its inception, done everything it can to make drag racing as safe as possible. And, lets us please remember, in many cases NHRA has done things for safety that none of us cared for or wanted, but thyey forced us into it anyway...for our own good. NHRA has closed many a drag strip (Baton Rouge, LA ...The Cajun Nationals for example) becuase the strip was not safe enough for 300+ mph cars. We hated that loss, but it was needed. Drag racing is DANGEROUS and that is why we do it. NHRA can control only so much. We, the racers, have to do what we can where we can when we can. Then cross our fingers, put faith in the Lord and race the shit out of our cars. It's called EXCITEMENT and it is dangerous. We all love it or we wouldn't do it. All hail Scott for he was one of the best. Beep
Im not blaming anybody but there really is no excuse for the safety net not extending the entire width of the track
Too early to blame anyone or anything, IMO. We can only hope that some good, in the form of further safety improvements, will come out of this tragic loss. I feel sure that will happen.
It's a tragedy, but drag racing is dangerous and those guys know that going in. Conditions can always be better and are constantly improving.
Way past time for NHRA to slow down the Nitro cars. But they won't,until the fans,or the insurance companies demand it.
Look at all the serious accidents, injuries and fatalities the past couple of years. What's been done in terms of funny car design, rule changes and track safety. Not much. Sure seems to me NHRA puts money ahead of safety.
I agree with Beep the NHRA's dedication to safety is why the cars are going 300+ and people rarely are hurt. I believe there is no excuse for a concrete barrier at the end of the track but, the NHRA should not be bashed because of these accidents. Anytime you have two hotrods side by side accelerating to over 300 MPH danger comes to mind and like before noted the drivers know that. And I believe that the only good thing the NHRA could do is to just take new jersey off the schedule or subject the track to buy more real estate for the shut down area. Concrete walls to stop racecars is unacceptable. In my personal opinion the cars should not be slowed down but maybe put on racetracks capable of giving the car enough area where it could be slowed down. But don't push blame on the NHRA it is wrong that the shut down wasn't big enough but the NHRA is dedicated to safety and they have acted on every fatality in recent times. How much more can they do. I haven't heard racers complain. I haven't heard any of the drivers ask to go slower. Thats why we watch them because the drivers of these cars are the baddest people out there not many people want to release the clutch pedal of a nitro car and those that do do it for a reason and its not because that is the only way they can make a living they do it because they love it and I don't believe any driver wants to go slower.
That's a good idea and tradition aside, it might be time to consider such a measure. At least until track and car improvements can catch up to the speeds.
I would be for 1000' but not 1/8th and I'll explain why. I am the crew chief on a nostalgia funny car / fuel altered. Last year at the World Fuel Altered Nationals at Eddyville Ia. (a 1/8th mile track) there were several accidents past the finish line. I talked with acouple of other crew chiefs and drivers and most said the 1/8th was too short for the cars. In the 1/4 you have a little time to settle in and down after the launch (get your hand on the chute levers, and prepare for the shut down), in the 1/8th you are launching and shutting down with no real time to settle the car down. I'm not saying 1/8th mile racing is more dangerous, but requires a driver that doesn't run the 1/8th that often to really be aware of what he's doing and how quick he needs to do it. But then again, if the 1/4 mile tracks were shortened to 1/8 that would just increase the shut down all the more. What is the right thing to do? I have no idea.
NJ's shutdown area may be up to par for normal circumstances, but not any help to Scott's scenario in which all possible "things that can go wrong" should be taken into account. couldn't see from the video but did the car hit the huge ass man-lift at the end? why was that there, for camera purposes?
Not wanting to start a pissing match,, but have you even seen what the new chassis and top cage looks like? Many changes have been made to the driver compartment and they are much safer than what we ran just a couple years ago. This wasnt a new problem like what happened to Medlin, (High frequency vibrations/oscilations), or a chassis failure like what happened to Force. This was an older problem, Scott hit something immoble going fast. The barrier he hit was placed there to keep the cars from shooting across a public road. Losing a racer is a bad thing, but losing a minivan full of kids on the way to soccer practice is another thing entirely. I'm sure that it was not driver error, Scott was a good wheelman and new the routine. Bang, ok we are on fire, get chutes out, fire bottles triggered, and get on the brakes. The chutes deployed when the body broke but never blossomed, no brakes no fire bottles. I think he was knocked out by the first explosion. (not an expert just my opinion) Moving and or changing the barrier and sand traps would probably help, but under normal conditions that track is plenty long. NHRA needs to find out why he was unable to slow the car down, if a piece of the body fouled the brake/firebottle handle then we need to change the designof the handle or build a guard for it, if Scott was KO'ed by the first pop, thats a different story. I'm also pretty sure that Scott would have wanted to pass on in an entirely different way, at home with wife and kids, IN PRIVATE, without all us internet co-pilots second guessing every millisecond of the pass. My heart and soul goes out to Conrad, the family and friends.
While it does suck when someone dies racing but Slow down Drag racing? why don't we just outlaw it? Drag racings whole point is to be the fastest. I'm sure the people that work their whole life to get to run with the big guys don't have any kind of "need for speed: thing going on. They know what they are getting into and they do it because they want to. If they want to runner slower than absolutly possible they can run some boring delay box car. Or maybe they will make John Force start running jr. dragsters, then the danger is he might fall asleep.
why do you think everybody heads for the beer stand or the pisser when the dial-in cars come out? riverrat
Every one is aware of the forthcoming lack of nitro. The world's single source (in China ) has ceased it's production and has made it known that future sales of the chemical will not go to drag racing. I will certainly miss the speeds and thunder of my favorite drag cars, the fuelers, but now's the opportunity to continue 1/4-mile racing and reduce racers' costs. And I just wonder how long it would take for the alky cars to reach present-days speeds and times.
Law of supply and demand. If the supply is suddenly shut off, you've got the opportunity to corner the market! Start your own nitro company and the racing world will beat a path to your door. If you build it, they will come...and they will come, Ray. As for the NHRA: Why shouldn't we blame them? They are the sanctioning body and they should have engineers responsible for looking at such things. Maybe an r/c kill or fire suppression release needs to be implemented. Once you see it on fire, you let the driver start to shut it down and do his job. You'd have an indicator that tells the crew that he's doing it. If he's NOT then the chief has the finger on the button. We have tire pressure senders on our minivans, why can't we have that on a horizontal rocket? Until it all comes out it sure looks like he would have died at the end of the track, not at the explosion. If it was the explosion, then he went doing what he loved. Kind of like the stories we keep hearing about some dumbass hitting a HAMBer while talking on the cell phone. Just because he was IN his rod doesn't mean he died doing what he loved. He was killed because of a negligent act. I'm not saying that they need to shut down or slow down, I'm saying they need to wake up. Great there was a barrier to stop them from going into the road. Then put up the water buckets like they have on nearly any interstate highway where there are lots of crashes. He'd have hit 500 gallons of water to slow him down BEFORE the wall did it.
why do you think everybody heads for the beer stand or the pisser when the dial-in cars come out? Just stand at an event and watch the stands!
Prudhomme said he hit the pole holding the net,not the net itself.. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...70/1048/SPORTS Don Prudhomme, a legendary figure in drag racing, witnessed the crash and said Kalitta's car "went into a million pieces." "I haven't witnessed anything like that in a number of years," Prudhomme said. "The car didn't slow up enough, got airborne, and he happened to hit a post that's virtually impossible to do. ... I would've never thought that you could get airborne and hit that guardrail and hit that post." The concrete post, Prudhomme said, serves as support for the safety net that's designed to catch cars veering off the strip. Because Kalitta's parachute never deployed, Prudhomme said the car "never had a chance" once it hit the post at such high speed.
It's interesting where you see so many complaints about cracklefest cars and the inability to run true vintage cars that the conversation turns to lacking safety measures when we lose a friend. I was surprised at the velocity maintained for the distance. Seems obvious to me that measures need to be taken to address this. I'm not sure that real estate is the answer. I'm thinking that if there is plenty of room for a normal stop with the on-board systems, there should be a way to safely stop these from the outside. I also wonder just how unusual this accident was. I've seen cars run off the end before, but I can't remember seeing one this heavily damaged continue upright and straight.
When you push the limits, sometimes they push back. We shouldn't "blame" anyone. Hindsight can be 20/20 but we've gotta be careful about pointing fingers. That leads to a certain kind of contest where nobody wins and everybody gets stinky wet. But maybe it is time to look at speed vs safety, and we need to do something smart instead of following NASCAR's "restrictor plate" type cures that are worse than the problem. Like one poster said things happen so quickly that drivers have their hands full on a good run, so when things go wrong they may not be able to react quickly enough. Maybe its time to go to smaller engines? "Stock" bodies? Smaller tires? I've watched "funny cars" go from the "match racers" and a stock body with a dragster engine in it to the hyper-complex car they run today. Can't say they're any more exciting now than then. Time to look at the other motor sports and how they've limited speed to meet the track's maximum speed. And remember those who gave us some great moments.
A larger roll cage to keep the driver's head from bouncing off the tubing in an accident. Increased padding around the roll cage for more protection for the driver. An enclosed tub for the drivers to protect their legs and arms in a crash. Additional support bars to strengthen a "weakness" found on the steering support. Increased thickness on chassis tubing from 1 3/8 inches to 1½ inches. A third rail on the side of the cars for added protection on the upper part of the driver's body. This added weight to the car, so the NHRA mandated a 100-pound weight increase for 2008. A blue box data recorder to study the G-forces of an impact in an accident. ----------- That said, the NHRA should not allow cars to run on a track surface that ends abruptly in a concrete barrier. There are less lethal ways to keep errant hot rods off a public road. RIP to Scott and the Kalitta family.
Why do people need to blame others for things out of their controll. The engine exploded . Let all involved be in peace. Accidents happen and the NHRA shoudnt be blamed for something these guys love doing but thanked for all the years of racing they allow us to do. Saftey is up to you as a team first and formost and nobody else.
It doesn't matter really. I've seen F-4D accidents where the biggest piece of remaining metal is the tail. Everything gets brittle and explodes as the velocity increases. Kinetic energy is awesome physics. 1/2 the mass times the velocity squared. That's the reason the Saudis flew their jets wide-open throttle into New York, and DC. They turned a little energy into a big energy. It's all up to the sponsors. The sponsors want to see their billboards go mAch 1, and we won't stop until we have dragsters going 700 MPH in 1/4 mile... Sure people will die, but more people die at 30 MPH than 300 MPH.
Yep, the engine exploded. And in a track with sufficient length to run out, this wouldn't have happened. There are shut down measures that were are typically taken but he ran out of room. At the end was a wall. The track wasn't long enough for the speeds that are seen today.
IMO the drags were more fun when a fast car ran 150 mph around 9.0 seconds. It seemed fasty at the time and you and a budy could get out there and have fun with them. Sort of like HAMB drags now. And with todays safty equiptment it should be very safe. How you could go back I have no idea.
Danimal, Have you ever been up close to a fuel motor explosion? He could have had 2miles for shutdown and would still be dazed. Quit trying to put blame. Maybe your one of the people who feel they should ban racing and wear helmits and saftey suits to walk across the street.
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