CRASH COURSE

By Dale Wilson
Photos courtesy Mark Rebilas
8/8/05

acing crashes seem to be attracted to Mark Rebilas. Or maybe it’s better said, most of the time, at least, that Mark Rebilas seems to be in the right place at the right time to capture racing crashes on film.

The latest example was the 200-mph, hit-the-wall-and-bounce-off fiery crash of Ron Krisher at the NHRA national race at Seattle International Raceway in late July. Capture it, heck --- Rebilas was 30 feet FROM it, standing atop somebody’s motor home with camera in hand. He was so close that he missed one shot of the car as it caroomed nearly up and over the SIR guard wall; Mark only got Krisher’s rear tire in that frame. But everything else he recorded, from the nearly-head-on initial bang into the left-hand guard wall to the fire that erupted after Krisher’s Pro Stock came to a stop.

The Krisher crash sequence has been one of his best shoots, Rebilas says. “I had a photo pass, and during the first round of eliminations, I was shooting parachute shots against the wall in the shutdown area. Anybody can shoot a burnout, but my specialty is crash pictures. That’s how I set myself apart from other photographers. When I was growing up, that’s all my dad wanted me to do, take pictures of crashes. So I got pretty good at that.

“I got up on somebody’s motor home in the shutdown area, and nothing else had happened all day. It was the semi-finals, and they (Krisher and Coughlin) came through the lights, and I was focused on Jeg, but I heard the people with me on the motor home scream, so I threw the camera back to Krisher and in my first picture, he was sliding on his side, pointing the car right at me. My camera takes five pictures a second, so I kept my finger planted on the button. After the second shot, he lands on his wheels and he’s going away and I think, ‘Aw, it’s over, I didn’t get anything too exciting.’ Then I heard a ‘poof’ and the thing bursts into flames. It’s pretty rare for a Pro Stock car to have a fire like that.

“I was worried for him,” Rebilas said. “I was focused on the burning car for what seemed like a half-minute before he got out. I kept on shooting. He wasn’t coming out of the car, and finally he came out,” Rebilas says. He got that series of shots too. Krisher later admitted that he got his foot hung between the throttle and the brake, and that probably caused his wreck. Luckily, his parachutes had deployed and not caught on fire, and that probably kept his Pro Stocker upright.

The car was destroyed, and Krisher couldn’t make the call for the race’s final round, even though he took the win light against Jeg Coughlin. The NHRA Safety Safari did its job exactly right. They sprayed Krisher down first, then attacked the raging fire in his Pro Stocker. Krisher was at the following race a week later in a backup Pro Stocker, his own Cavalier that was brought to Sonoma with the help of fellow racer V. Gaines. After the Sonoma race, Gaines provided another truck to take Krisher’s hurt Cobalt back to chassis builder Jerry Haas’ shop for a look-see and possible repairs.

Krisher had a sore throat from smoke inhalation, and a slight burn on his hand. Immediately after the wreck, he said he was going fishing with a friend. Later on, in the few days between the NHRA races at Seattle and Sonoma, he got offers of help from racers Greg Anderson, Mike Edwards, Dave Connolly, Warren Johnson, Ben Watson and V. Gaines. Gaines diverted one of his trucks to Krisher’s shop to pick up Ron’s standby Cavalier and take it to Sonoma. It and he made the race.

The Seattle Times ran the Krisher crash shots on the front page of its sports section, then Jeff Burk ran it on Dragracingonline.com, and Drag Racer magazine has bought some of the sequence. Ron Krisher and his team also will buy some photos.