Did the motor blow BEFORE the chassis failed??/ Did it's job...
Things happened real quick in that video... But the right side of that car definitely dropped to the ground in a blink!! I better stop speculating... Only one camera angle and no instant replays with Dunn in the booth, I'll only get in trouble here...

Let's hope she is fine tomorrow and not too sore. Do not come to any speculation about the tires, the car crashed and that will tear up a lot of things. Goodyear makes a great tire. Jack had somekind of failure in Phoenix and hopefully we and the Goodyear can figure out what happaned. There are many things that cause tires to go away so do not be quick to determin what caused what. I was not in Vegas so I have no first hand knowledge about any of this. I was in Phoenix and I will wait to determin what went on.

There you go everyone , the shoe has spoken . Lets just hope everything is ok.

My view of the crash was not nearly as good as Bob’s; I was at the starting line. The video I have of it not as good as the tower cam video on u-tube. All I know is that was one spectacular crash and I am so glad Hillary is OK. It looked really bad from my vantage point.

Off to the left of the video just in front of the score board there is a scaffold with a cameraman on it, I know that if I were on the scaffold my shorts would still be MIA.

Also did you notice how long the injector was in the air at (least I think it was the injector) yikes! When the engine augured in it looked like a rocket hitting the ground.

I watched the video FULL SCREEN over and over again... Everything happens extremely fast... duh!! But if you pause it at the right moment, it APPEARS that something flies off the left side, at an incredible speed and takes out the left hand portion of the wing which after that millisecond, all hell breaks loose...

Is it just me or on that youtube video did it look like what coused the damage came from underneath the car

Damn that is scary. So glad she's OK.
If the motor exploded, possibly because the 85%??

I have thought about this scenario a fw times, and have wondered why nobody has made a serious attempt at developing a "mud guard/fender" that goes around the rear tire to deflect any stray rubber/tread that may fly from the tire at high speed, providing atleast one barrier to protect the wing from bing torn apart.

I understand that rubber travelling at the speed would be hard to stop no matter which way you look at it, but it is something that I think could b investigated.



A couple of points on the monostrut debate:

1. If the actual wing (airfoil) is damaged, as appeared to happen with Will, there is still no downforce and this is going to dramatically affect the car at speed, especially with that engine trying to rotate the car around the crankshaft/drive shaft. The monostrut may act as a rudder, but it won't be a "cure all"... which i don't expect anyone thinks it will.

2. The monostrut will only help if the rear end is still attached to the car.

Torco Racing Fuel's Competition Plus.com - Drag Racing's Internet Magazine - Volume 9, Issue 01; January 2007 has a few excellent pics of what is left of the car... very interesting at that... and a conversation with Ken Black...

On a side note- Goodyear is great, but when have we ever heard them say that a tire came apart, shredded, delaminated, or just failed?? It's always, we believe that it ran over debris... or we believe something cut it... I believe there is a lamination issue, PERIOD... JMHO
No matter WHAT anyone says...

john i drive semi truck for a living and have lost many a tire! and i dont care what you put around a tire when it blows it sounds and feels like a bomb going off! i have ripped fenders completely off trucks fenders that weigh around 100lbs and it has tore them completely off the mount!

now as for this crash man that was scary looking ...and i am so glad that hill is ok!
we lost a friend and racer tonight in our last race of the year up here in our indoor series with the midgets.. i dont know if he had a heart attack or what but he hit the wall full throttle. the emt's tryed to revive him but was unable.
i hate to see anyone hurt or worse.

Here is a photo of the Engine up against the fence. this is quite far off the actual track and yes the engine did go up about 50 feet in the air. I was on the right side of the track and I had my brother and a friend with me. and they concure about the hight. And again we can't stop thinking how lucky she is to be safe. I can't say nothing about tire delamination. as it didn't look like from our vantage piont wich was better then most as we were on the side were the frame blew out.

But as I said before it looked like the engine blew and something broke the chassie. one other thing I didn't put before was the rearend seperated from the car and the wing broke when it was tumbling down the track following the car. We were more worried about Hillary and after I looked to make sure where the tub was I watched the engine roll to a stop about 400 feet from us. And then we rolled down toward the end of the track to check on her to make sure she was ok.. we were pretty stunned.

Here is a crappy photo I took with my cell. sorry for the quailty. I normaly take my Nikon with me and shoot alot of photos. but this time we had just finished a late breakfest and decided to run out there fast.

The side of the engine I shot here is in tack with no rods out the side. The fireball got out attention pretty good and it happend so fast it's hard to imagine how far the engine flew. I have been going to the drags since I was 12 or so and was in Reading when Kenny blew through the air and broke apart there.

again sorry for the bad photo but it's a cell pic.

I know Ken Black and Greg and the guys over there. And if any knows Ken knows safety is #1. and I hope they can figure out what happend.

I tried to up load it here but can't figure out how it insert and image. let me know how to add it and I will try.


I am new to the the board and am not sure how it works. or if some one wants to do it I will email it to them and they can upload it some where people can see it.

Yeah Ray- if the motor explosion was as violent as the outcome looked (way fast in the video), then absolutely a breakaway was warranted. But we've seen hundreds of nitro motors fail and the chassis bend but stay intact. Are we heading twords boomers immediately causing separation because of brittle hardened pipe?

Just really glad Hill is alright, and the POD did its job...

Paul,

Back in the early 90s Joe Amato had like a guard fender that covered the front of the rear slicks. I do beleive he did, I seem to have an image in my head of it, I could be wrong though. On a lot of my old drawings, I use to draw rear guards that covered the front of the tires...

Mike

PS I'm glad Will got out of it fine, that sure was a nasty crash.

Mike

Ha ha ha! Great one Alan.

Glad to hear Hillary is okay!