Hillary wasn't wearing her shoulder harnesses? She said that there was a malfunction?

I say that werent latched.



Did you hear her say that if they didnt find a sponsor they wouldnt run next year?

Without more information, it's impossible to say what happened. It was frightening seeing her come up out of the seat.

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"The Counterfeiter"

It looks similar to what happens to drag boat drivers coming tumbling forward when they lose power. Malfunction or not, I bet Conrad is not happy right about now. I'm sure that they will find the problem and it won't happen again.
The most important thing is that she is OK. Thank god.

The incident reminded me of when Tony Pedregon almost went through the windshied in the late 90's when his belts came undone. Scary!

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Yep, that was when Tony had the latch type locks rather than the cam lock. Something caught the lever and pulled it up unhooking the belts. Cam locks can unhook too, and you can twist the cam lock sometimes to get only the belts you want to unhook without losing all the belts. I'm not sure what she's using but I'm sure glad she was able to brace herself.

She "agreed" with GG's assessment of the belts coming loose, but when the camera panned on her as she was heading back to the pits, she had a smile on her face and made the gesture towards her head with her hand like a gun. Something tells me they didn't get cinched-up after being latched, or they didn't get latched at all.

Either way, damn glad it didn't turn ugly.

Sean D

How the H*ll do you not strap a driver in right? Whoever strapped her in needs to be fired!

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Samuel - do you know something the rest of us don't? If not, I would suggest that EVERYONE stop speculating and wait for some factual information.
There are a lot of Kalitta fans here, and I'm sure they are upset enough without people who have no facts suggesting something like this.

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"The Counterfeiter"

A crew member straps the driver in, right? Well apparently he didn't do his job correctly.

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"The Counterfeiter"

Wow thats pretty amazing. I can imagine a scenario where that would happen but I maybe better not type it.

But to prevent the scenario I have not typed and could happen only in theory. You could instruct the driver to not pull the shoulder belts down onto their lap in anticipation of a crew member latching them and cinching them up tight. That way the crew would see the shoulder belts draped over the main hoop and not assume they were latched and cinched.

My drivers pull theirs down and then when I do my final check, I check the neck collar and the belts.

Most of the crew members and drivers live by the "Same thing every time" rule, but sometimes something happens like an oil down where the driver gets out after you cinch her down and then your routine gets disrupted.

Kind of like when you turn your headlights on when you are driving in the early morning hours and then when it gets light you forget you had them on so you don't turn them on. Or you turn then off because you think it might be light enough but you second guess and then turn them back on, and then you leave them on.

You can swear up and down that it's not acceptable, and it's not really, but it happens to the best and Hillary's crew ranks up there as the best.

You're right, Jim, we shouldn't speculate. But I would venture to say that if the latch mechanism failed in any way, that would've been the first thing out of Hillary's mouth when GG shoved the mic in her face. Since that didn't happen, it's a pretty safe bet that whoever is responsible for the latching and/or cinching of the belts, whether that's Hillary herself or a member of the crew, didn't git-er-done.

I'm fortunate enough to have someone that belts me in for every lap, but at the end of the day, it's my a$$ on the line, so I see it as my responsibility to make sure it's handled.

Sean D

I've belted my dad, brother, and multiple friends into funny cars and you don't just forget the shoulder harnesses....and the event that is what happened, if hillary didnt shout at the top of her lungs HEY JACKASS YOU FORGOT SOMETHING!!! then shame on her....something had to have happened to cause that.

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