Just saw on ESPN that the Associated Press reports that NHRA driver Scott Kalitta has died after his car went out of control during qualifying for the Lucas Oil NHRA SuperNationals. Shitty to hear.
links are helpful when posting news stories:
http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/8269208?MSNHPHCP>1=39002
sad. RIP
very sad indeed, he was one of the guys I would root for on espn2
there’s the video.
HOLY SHIT. This just sucks so bad…RIP. I just watched the video…seems like not a whole lot of runoff on that track. Usually there is like a few hundred feet of sand or whatever. Looks like there was about 50 feet and then a concrete wall.The explosion must have knocked him out or something, because he never pulled the chute. It did sort-of deploy after the body blew off, but not nearly enough to slow it down much. Damn…
Does anyone else think its Fucked up that there’s a straight track that ends in a solid wall at the end of it? No gravel pits, no tires or hay bails, just essentially what appears to be a small, very small pile of dirt then a wall. I think in this day and age when we can get cars that go 0-330 in 4.9 seconds that no one has figured how to get these cars slowed down safely when there is a total chute failure. Like in this case with a fire essentially melting it.
To me it looks like it exploded before the end of the track. From the video it looks like a there’s a fence at the end and a small sand trap. A couple articles i read said that the track has had complaints about how short the run off is
wow. just a pain to watch the video. looks like he was unconscious from the explosion and the brake was never applied.
I heard about this last night at my friend Jon’s house. He works in the drag industry, and his brother builds chassis’ for pro-mod drag cars. From his experience at Englishtown, and from watching the video (in HD in slow motion about 50 times) here’s what we deduced:
The chutes are connected to the chassis, and stored on the body, so when the rear of the body flew off, they deployed. However, they were hanging out in the flames too long, which reduced their effectiveness.
The explosion at 1/8 mile or so knocked Kalitta unconscious.
The gravel and netting at the end of the track did very little, because the car was still traveling at 150+ mph.
The impact that blows the hood portion of the body off the car is the white wall, the following explosion is the impact of then hitting the camera crane.
Shitty thing to happen, and not much could have changed the outcome. Gravel / sand / and the like wouldn’t do much to slow down a car going that fast. Usually a driver is conscious and can scrape the wall to slow down, but as you can tell, Kalitta was knocked unconscious by the explosion around 1/8 mile.
Probably a dumb comment, but wouldn’t you think that they would have some kind of computer hooked to the car that would pull the chute and apply the brake if the driver isn’t able to?
yeah except the computer would have most likely been toast from the initial explosion.
Sad sad day.
That video is tough to watch…you just hope he felt no pain and rests in a good place now.
take a look at satellite images of that track…the shutdown is longer than the track…followed by a sand pit. i’m guessing the wall is there, after the sand because there is a road directly behind it.
Ya know, that’s not a bad idea. They could have it so that it automatically triggers after the finish line or something.
If you watch the video the chutes were deployed. But due to the fire from the engine backfiring they were damaged and a little less than effective.
:tup: to Robert Hight and how he handled the first round where he was supposed to run Kalitta.