Monday, June 23, 2008

Tragic weekend

Tragedy struck the motorsports world twice this past weekend. In addition to Scott Kalitta's fatal NHRA Funny Car crash on Saturday, an American vintage racer (Dino Crescentini of Rochester Hills, Mich.) was killed at Mosport on Sunday. The Toronto Star has the story here.

I would be interested to hear from drag racing people what they thought of the Kalitta crash. The explosion was very nasty - and for all we know, he could have been fatally injured at that point. But after seeing the entire piece, my only thought was, 'Why the #$%&# is there a hard wall at the end of a 300+ mph drag strip?'

Will Kalitta's death spur big league drag racing to do what Senna's death did for F1 and what Earnhardt's death did for NASCAR? Or would a bigger gravel trap, better nets or a much longer run0ff strip not have made a difference?
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Posted by GREGM at 9:32 AM

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's a public road right behind the gravel trap. Check Google Maps.

Surprisingly, while you're on Google Maps/Earth, check out some other pro drag strips used by the NHRA. Englishtown's shockingly small sandtrap is by no means an anomaly.

4:44 PM
potsie said...

While the trap at Englishtown may appear small, I think it's the speed that proved fatal.

From the video, the chutes failed and it appears the brakes never engaged, be it due to mechanical failure or Scott possibly being knocked out.

The speed was simply too high - no amount of sand would have helped. The car was vaulted into the air as soon as it hit the sand.

A longer trap may have kept him out of the trees/boom that were there, but I still think the impact would have proven horrific at any other facility.

5:19 PM
Tim Wohlford said...

Potsie --

What speed would've been non-lethal? Would 200 mph have yielded different results?

Gravel traps have proven to be ineffective in road racing, where the speeds are far lower, and the cars (for the most part) lighter. Perhaps we need to re-visit the sand trap to look for something better?

10:19 PM
potsie said...

Would 200 mph have proved survivable? Who knows - possibly but that's not my point. Scott was going too fast for any of the systems in place.

I agree with your point - the trap was useless - should a pole have been there that could have possibly been struck? No, but it was there because nobody ever considered a car getting to the trap at those speeds and going airborne - now, unfortunately, that needs to be considered.

12:09 AM

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