This was at a bracket race at Fremont Dragstrip, close to the end of the last year ('83 I think). Since they knew the track was going to close, tech inspection was getting pretty loose.
As a friend of mine said, "every horror story in the garage is coming out for a last shot at the track".
I can briefly see my black Malibu getting ready to pull in to the bleach box behind them. I was actually paired up to run against the '56 until another car pulled out of line.
The drivers son was standing right by my car while his dad did the burnout. Unfortunately when the '56 pulled out of the water and started heating the tires, only one tire spun and got hot, they must have had a posi with worn clutches. Or maybe the car broke an axle during the burnout, that actually is probably more likely and caused the crash.
The son was yelling at the dad to try to tell that something was wrong during the burnout, but the dad didn't hear and pulled up and staged the car.
After the car flipped nobody realized the driver had flown out of the car and had stood up. The safety vehicle (well, the tracks ratty Ford Ranger) went flying down to the crash, and as people watched I remember people saying-
"Hey, whats that guy doing there standing on the track, he shouldn't be out there. And why does he have a helmet on? Hey, wait a minute, that's the driver".
I looked at the car after the crash, and you could see that the seat, which was a later model GM stock bench seat, had just been tack welded to the sheet metal floor. The driver had ended up flying out of the front windshield. My memory is that he was banged up and twisted his back some, but didn't have any long term injuries.
Wow, a miracle of the internet, I never thought I'd get to watch that crash again.
Paul T.
