With two fatalities and a third horrific crash in its Funny Car class since March 2007, the NHRA needs to wake up to the fact it has a safety crisis on par with what NASCAR faced after Dale Earnhardt and three other drivers were killed in 2000-01.
Bay area resident Scott Kalitta’s death Saturday at Englishtown, N.J., came only 15 months after Eric Medlen suffered fatal injuries while testing at Gainesville Raceway. In September, 14-time Funny Car champion John Force was nearly killed in a crash at Ennis, Texas.
Kalitta was killed after his engine exploded near the finish line, preventing his parachute from working, and his car hit a concrete post at the end of a sand-filled runoff area.
“We really don’t want to comment until we’ve had a chance to conduct our investigation,” NHRA vice president Jerry Archambeault said Monday.
The crashes had different circumstances, indicating that the NHRA and the drag-racing industry need to take the same multi-faceted approach to safety improvements that NASCAR, its tracks and its team owners have taken this decade.
Now it’s time for the NHRA to look at, among other things, inadequacies at aging tracks that were built for speeds much slower than 330 mph.
Drivers say the runoff area at Englishtown’s 43-year-old Old Bridge Township Raceway Park is insufficient.
Between May 2007 and February 2008, NASCAR lost drivers Kenny Irwin, Adam Petty, Tony Roper and Earnhardt, arguably the greatest stock-car driver of all-time. Under intense media scrutiny in the months and years that followed, NASCAR designed and implemented a safer car, the tracks installed energy-absorbing barriers on their concrete walls, and teams and vendors improved harnesses, seats and helmets.
The NHRA and the drag-racing industry won’t be subjected to intense scrutiny, but they needs to react with the same sense of purpose to protect its drivers.
Now, surviving drivers have to deal with the reality that driving an NHRA Funny Car is the most dangerous job in major American motor sports.
Now, the NHRA has a chance to make Scott Kalitta’s tragic death mean something.
| 
|