Miller was more blunt: "In drag racing, the name of the game's nitromethane. People come to the track to see cars go more than 300 miles an hour in a quarter-mile."

Roll-cage protection received little resistance. Coil explained why: "After you become fully aware that sort of thing can happen and as simple as it is to put a shield behind the driver's noggin, gee, why not? It seems like there's no downside to that."

Coil said the roll cage shields that are affixed to Force's, Eric Medlen's, and Densham's Ford Mustangs weigh eight pounds each. Coincidentally, each of the new-compound tires is eight pounds lighter than the one it replaced. So that's an eight-pound swing in the driver's favor. "No big deal," Coil said.

Some drivers and observers say unless and until NHRA figures a way to take some of the downforce load from the rear wing of a Top Fuel dragster, crashes will continue to happen at these speeds. Teams could discuss the merits of modifying the monostrut rear end Don Garlits has extolled for years and Mike Kloeber has studied. They could calculate how to redesign and reinforce a dragster chassis if the rear wing were trimmed. They could advocate canards or side pods.

But none of that might matter. It depends if the task force decides downforce is the enemy. Or if it needs to decide anything profound at all. It's premature to expect any decisions, with only its second meeting set for noon July 30 at Sonoma, Calif. It was hard enough just to confirm the names of the task-force members. Don Taylor, NHRA's senior director

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of national technical operations, repeatedly declined to name the sanctioning-body officials and Top Fuel and Funny Car team owners and crew chiefs he is working with. However, DRO learned that the list includes Kenny Bernstein, Jerry Gwynn, Alan Johnson, Connie Kalitta, Dick LaHaie, Jim Oberhofer, Don Prudhomme, Tim Richards, Tim Wilkerson, and Chuck Worsham.

But Taylor's paranoia twisted one ho-hum question into a series of uncertainties. Why were drivers not informed about who was on the committee? Or that it had a two-hour meeting in Denver that Taylor at first denied? What's on the agenda? Does the task force have a shelf life? When will it share its progress with the racers or public? Is it required to recommend any changes at all? Why isn't a Goodyear engineer or representative on the task force? And why is Wilkerson, also a team owner, the lone driver?

Jerry Archambeault, vice-president of public relations and communications, said, "We don't have anything to hide, but we don't have anything to announce." Maybe NHRA doesn't have anything to hide at all. But it did have news to announce. Many drivers said in Seattle they had no idea the task force is staffed already, how the members were selected, or how to contribute to the discussions. The consensus was "We don't want to blame NHRA. We just would like to be informed and know that somebody is doing something."

At least Coil and Miller helped address some of those questions. Miller said drivers weren't selected to serve on the task force because "it's not a driver-input situation. If you invite them, you might as well invite an oncologist. It's for the nuts-and-bolts guys; itís for the gear heads." He said the committee needs to be streamlined to be productive and that driver participation "slows the process down."

Miller's candor is appreciated. However, he and his colleagues might do well to remember that their rear ends aren't the ones strapped into the race cars.

Perhaps it's because Russell's death resulted from a freakish, nearly- impossible-to-duplicate occurrence. Perhaps it's because all racers are uniquely geared. But they accept the risks inherent to their sport and don't spend much time dwelling on danger. So it would seem unnatural to many of them to analyze the ways to reduce the risk. That would get dangerously close to erasing the thrill.