As a nitrous racer there may be things that make you cringe when you step on the gas pedal and this is one of them. The racer in this car (who is unnamed) was moving the car toward staging and the revs were coming up when KABOOM there was a massive explosion inside the intake manifold which triggered a huge starting line fire. As you will see when you watch the video, the entire top of the intake was blown completely off the base and when that happened the fuel was flowing and the fire was ON. Thankfully, because this happened right at the starting line people were able to respond and stop the flames before they completely melted the car down.
A couple of things here. There were guys standing really close to that car on the driver’s side and you will see them suffer the natural human reaction when an explosion takes place, which is to essentially duck and bring their hands up. Those guys could have been hurt pretty bad if this were any worse and they caught jagged fiberglass or carbon fiber with their faces, etc. This was a little on the weird side as we have normally seen these big starting line manifold blowers happen when a driver stands on the throttle to leave. It doesn’t sound like the driver is all the way into it when the explosion happens so we’re not totally sure what happened. Obviously something ignited all of the fuel in the plenum and things got worse from there. This video was taken at Carolina Dragway, the famed “house of hook”. We’re not sure if this is a PDRA pro nitrous car or what but it sure has that sound of packing LOTS of cubic inches under the hood and by the looks of the engine pieces there were a couple kits of spray on this mother.
