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Carnage Video: Top Fuel Reverse Burnout and Guardrail Smash, OCIR, 1980


Carnage Video: Top Fuel Reverse Burnout and Guardrail Smash, OCIR, 1980

Driving a Top Fuel Dragster is no easy feat. It wasn’t any easier back in the early 1980s as this video will show you. Filmed at the now defunct Orange County International Raceway in 1980, you’ll see stuff go really, really wrong after the driver engages the reverser to bring the car back to the starting line after warming up the slicks. We obviously don’t know for sure what happened but we do know that anytime we have ever seen the throttle applied to a dragster moving in reverse, bad stuff happens in the blink of an eye.

What’s really crazy about this video is the fact that just when you think things are over, the dragster (which seems to have a mind of its own) tries to claw and chew its way over the guard wall and out of the “park”. We’re happy that the car did not make it over the wall onto solid ground because if it did, stuff could have gotten uglier than we can imagine. Part of us wonders if this was a new car and something freak happened or perhaps it was brain fade on the part of the driver that lead to a nice looking dragster to huge center on the wall with the blown motor screaming.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE IT ALL GO VERY WRONG AT OCIR IN 1980!


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6 thoughts on “Carnage Video: Top Fuel Reverse Burnout and Guardrail Smash, OCIR, 1980

  1. Gary Smrtic

    That’s what killed Shelly Howard, and her handicapped son, testing in Tulsa a few years’ back. Rail went back into the service truck her boy was in, watching her, and they were both killed.

    1. Anonymous

      Not quite. The car made a pass,blew over,came back down facing the starting line and continued under power towards and into the starting line area.

  2. Greg Rourke

    There was a similar incident on a Diamond P video. The dragster got away from the driver in reverse, and every barrel roll the injector hit the ground and whacked the throttle again, causing another roll.

  3. gary351c

    Good old OCIR, I was down ther a few weeks ago except it’s a bussiness park now. That Caddy-GMC dealer is still in bussiness .

  4. chuck

    i remember watching that from the Stands as i spent many hours watching the races as i was stationed next door at MCAS El Toro at that time

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