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6/29/04
We all Forgot to Put Safety
First
 he
sport of drag racing lost one of its truly good guys in
the tragic crash of Darrell Russell. I wasn't close to the
fellow Texan but I am to his crew chief, Wayne Dupuy, whom
I've known and been friends with for close to 20 years.
My heart goes out to Darrell's family for their loss and
to my friend Wayne, who always crossed himself as he walked
away from the car before a lap, and who will take this loss
harder than anyone can imagine. Because I really didn't
know him that well, I will leave it to his friends to document
Darrell's life and accomplishments. Instead, I want to talk
about the fact that I'm convinced this loss might have been
avoided.
What makes this tragedy so hard for me to take is that
I'm convinced there were many warning signs in advance of
this racing accident indicating it was going to happen.
Unfortunately, just like the Challenger space shuttle crash
which resulted from ignoring the warning signs, so did drag
racing ignore the warning signs signs in Top Fuel with the
same result; tragedy and loss of life.
The fact is that for over a decade supercharged, nitro-burning, 300-plus mph cars have had problems with tires chunking, shredding and failing. I can't even begin to add up the number of drivers I know who have had crashes caused by rear tire failure. But I want to say right here that I don't think the responsibility for those crashes are traceable to the Goodyear Tire Company. No, the blame, in my opinion, rests squarely on the shoulders of the sanctioning bodies, the team owners, and the racing press.
The basic problem is clear: Top Fuel and Fuel Funny Cars are simply going too fast for the tires that currently are available.
But again I'll say that you can't lay the blame on Goodyear. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and its engineers are probably the only ones involved in this mess who are mostly blameless. They've spent a large amount of their money and engineering expertise trying to develop a tire that could safely be used on racecars driven at speeds above 325 mph. At the same time they warned the sport's managers that the tires had issues. Nevertheless, the sanctioning bodies continued to allow the speeds of both Top Fuel and Funny Cars to escalate without taking any effective actions to address the increasing speeds and related dangers.
Team owners and the press have to take a hit here also. We all knew there was a tire problem directly related to cars going too fast and having too much tire speed and too much downforce exerted on those tires, and we all said almost nothing. We all stood by and watched racer after racer crash and basically did nothing, using the excuse that doing so might sour the relationship between Goodyear and the sport. What a cowardly, stinking, load of an excuse that was and is -- "Don't worry about the driver. Can we still get tires?"
According to most of the crew members and crew chiefs I talked to at St. Louis, over the weekend the tire problem was so bad that many, although certainly not all, of the top teams (including John Force's entire team), were mounting new tires after EVERY pass because they felt the tires were safe for use on only one or two passes at the most. And apparently this has been the practice of some teams since the NHRA race at Bristol at the end of April!
NASCAR, F-1, and the IRL are just a few of the racing sanctioning bodies that recognized that their cars are going too fast and made drastic changes to slow them down. NASCAR went from cars with 425+ cubic inch big blocks to cars with 355 cubic inch small blocks in one season. You can find similar decisions in the Cart, IRL and F-1 series. In drag racing we have gone over 10 years knowing that at some tracks, under certain weather conditions, our cars were just too fast for the tires to perform as designed.
Yet we all just continued to let drivers take the risk and hoped for the best. We watched drivers like Gary Scelzi, Doug Herbert, Bruce Litton and others survive horrific crashes due to tire failure and did nothing significant to solve the problem other than ask Goodyear to make better tires. Evidently slowing the cars down simply wasn't an option.
As a sport we are damn lucky that we haven't seriously injured or killed a
lot more drivers. The tires on one of the finalists in Top
Fuel at St. Louis came back to the pits with a big chunk
of rubber gone and signs that the sidewall was failing,
according to observers at the track. Just how close were
we to another crash at that same race?
Both NHRA and IHRA need to institute radical rules to slow down both the Top Fuel and Funny Cars immediately. The most obvious solution would be to dramatically reduce the rear wing area and spoilers on both Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars.
According to chassis builder and aero specialist Mike Spitzer,
the rear wings on a Top Fuel car currently produce 8,000-10,000
lbs. of downforce. Cut that in half. Better yet call the
engineers at Goodyear and ask them how much downforce they
would feel comfortable with. My bet is that they will be
able to give you that information in about ten-seconds or
less. If that doesn't make sense, then reduce maximum blower
overdrive to 20%. Either one of those rules would be easily
policed. To insure that Darrell Russell didn't sacrifice
his life in vain NHRA and IHRA need to immediately and I
mean like tomorrow, and certainly before the NHRA race at
Denver and the IHRA race in Canada make rule changes to
slow the cars down.
The sanctioning bodies haven't had any problems Making and implementing rules that slowed Pro Modifieds and Harley-Davidsons. What's their problem with making rules to slow down the Top Fuel and Funny Car classes?
Shame on all of us -- the press, the team owners, and the sanctioning bodies. We've failed in the one responsibility we all share: to protect the drivers from their blind dedication to going fast and winning at all costs. They'll drive or race anything. They depend on the sanctioning body to make the sport safe and protect them. Safety is (or was) the cornerstone of the National Hot Rod Association.
So, I'm saying to all of you team owners and rule makers to put aside the politics, park your egos at the door, and do the right thing to make the nitro classes safer. The fans can't tell the difference between a 300-mph pass and 340-mph pass. Neither the NHRA nor the IHRA pay points for speed records, so what's the point or the necessity for 330-mph Funny Cars or 340-mph Top Fuel cars -- bragging rights?
Maybe slowing the cars down isn't the complete answer to the problem, but it has to be a better program that what we have now. I'm sure the NHRA and Goodyear are going to come up with some kind of new tire for the rest of the season, but to me that is just a short-term fix. Those tires will "chunk" and fail too, unless Goodyear produces a miracle.
The people that run this sport had better find a way to make their marquee classes safer before a fuel car going over 250-mph at the eighth-mile has a bad accident involving a lot of spectators, and a judge and jury puts us out of business -- or, worse yet, we lose another racer.
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