Grant Downing, for those who do not know, is the in-house chassis builder for Worsham Racing. Grant builds every one of their complete race cars from start to finish and is responsible for all aspects of fabrication. His dream to drive a funny car is only over shadowed by his passion for the funny car class as a whole.

I interviewed Grant today. He specifically asked me to express his opinions on the internet, based on his years of experience. He felt that if enough knowledge and experience is put out for everyone to see it might make a difference when the rule makers decide what, if anything, should be done. His biggest fear is knee jerk reactions that will effect his chassis design and the driver he is responsible for by making them more dangerous, which seems to be the trend.

Grant started by saying he is very thankful John Force was not more seriously injured and that Robert Hight's episode wasn't serious.

My question to Grant had to do with chassis failures at Worsham Racing. I asked him to be 100% honest with me because, as we know, his chassis have made the highlight reel on ESPN2 more than once. He agreed.

He is aware that the feeling is "all chassis break." I asked him point blank "How many times have your frames at CWR broken in the driver's compartment?"

Emphatically, Grant said "NEVER!"

I asked him again about the drivers compartment, "Grant, you have NEVER had a failure? Come on. Del has thrown bodies off the car, run over everything and seen Elvis himself. OK, what about the "X" brace under the seat?"

"We have never broken a frame rail from the front of the engine to the back of the car. Never. One time a tube in front of the engine broke after the car hit the wall. The tubes are smaller in that area. But, like I said, we have never broken a tube behind the front of the engine."

He went on to say that a tire coming apart should not be causing chassis failures. "Del had a tire delaminate at Reading a few years ago at a match race. It vibrated and shook him so hard it knocked him out. After that he crashed into the wall. Not one tube on that car broke. None."

Grant continued by saying that Del has exploded engines so hard that one time the chassis tin was actually blown off the car. Del went into the sand at Pomona and flipped it three times end over end. He said there have been so many instances where you could say that the car should have come apart or broke when Cory Lee drove, or Burkhart, or Arend. But the truth is at Worsham racing they have never had a tube break at all...ever...from the front of the engine at the motor plate all the way to the back of the car. Never.

I said "Grant, this is a two car team, meaning you are making twice as many runs and are twice as likely to break something compared to a one car team like Densham, Dunn or Wilkerson." Grant stood his ground and said "Never."

Grant feels his current design (he uses an .065 lower frame rail, 4130N not heat treated) has proven itself to be safe in the most violent episodes. He shares the same opinion many other respected chassis builders do. Adding tubing to or bracing a chassis that was originally designed to flex will redistribute the stress to other areas and cause failures. Those stresses coupled with heat treated tubing are a disaster waiting to happen. Wholesale design changes are not the answer and he wants it to be known he is afraid NHRA or SFI will require dangerous design changes to a frame that, in his mind, has shown itself to be safe and has saved lives.

Grant has earned the respect of major teams and has turned down offers from them to become their in-house guy. He enjoys his relationship with the Worsham's too much to leave. In my book, he's one of the best. I think it would serve all those involved to hear what he has to say. Looking at his experience, we shouldn't take him too lightly. In the real world computer models don't make runs. Funny cars do.

Randy

RG, I was saying last week that these JF Chassis failures were to coincidental to be a Class problem and got Burned for it! I'd like to know what Murf was doing different on the Force cars to cause all of this?

__________________
Shift for Brains!!!!

AMEN Brother!

__________________
Bob Meyer Race Cars / San Diego
2005 Our 40th Anniversary

I hope people listen to grant because he knows his stuff

Thanks for posting this. There's goes the argument for some that all the chassis manufacturers have had tubing break.

__________________
"I got a fever, and the only prescription... is more cowbell!"

Buell's and Hardley's suck!

Someone needs to listen about the heat treating, PRO,NHRA.SFI. Randy What about getting this 4130 from China due to lack of it here in the U.S Could you ask him where he gets his from.

Randy,

That's exactly what I was saying earlier in the week... Thanks for sharing and please pass along my appreciation to Grant for being so open!

__________________
Greg Stanley
2007 NorCal Top Comp Champion

Interesting and educational.............Thanks Grant and Randy!!!

Thumbs up to Randy for getting this posted, and thanks to Grant for taking the time to talk about it. Very interesting stuff.

__________________
Evil Squirrels Are After My Nuts
Avatar courtesy of T-Nebraski
The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept.

Just curious on how Grant feels about the titanium skin that Jim Head added to his chassis?

Thanks for sharing Randy, good stuff.

An informative as Grant's background and experience in this area is, I have a feeling NHRA will certainly go into Panic mode and make wholesale changes to these cars! As for Jim Head; I'm curious if he's experienced any Chassis failures on his cars? Does Grant Downing build cars for other drivers, or just the Worshams?

__________________
Shift for Brains!!!!

Great post.

Grant has built a handful of cars for other teams in the past (Jim Dunn for example), but for the past few years he has been building exclusively for the Worsham 2-3 car teams. That keeps the 1-man fab shop (when the teams are away from Orange) quite busy!

__________________
Josh

www.jbracecraft.com

With two races to go, NHRA appears to be in ostritch mode (head in the sand) and allowing teams to make whatever modifications they feel will work with no supervision. The purported computer simulations are a joke, because there is no real time data available. I have no idea how NHRA can approach solving this problem with no data and no one in the Technical Department who has a clue about metallurgy or gathering data.
My suggestion? Hire an engineer who has motorsports experience, give him/her a big budget and the authority to require FC teams to attend test sessions after Pomona. No more Flintstones BS - wire the cars up with equipment that can find what is happening in real time. And . . . if a solution is found, the new Chassis Czar should have complete control.
No more knee jerk engineering by team owners and crew chiefs - JMHO

__________________
"The Counterfeiter"

So is NHRA supposed to come up with a 'common' chassis for everyone to use? Or are they supposed to redo everyone's chassis b/c JFR has had problems? Is it NHRA's responsibility to 'correct' the chassis problems for teams that are not having problems???