This one nearly registered on the richter scale. Terry McMillan suffered one of the worst and most violent engine explosions in modern top fuel history on Sunday at the 2017 NHRA New England Nationals during the first round of eliminations. McMillan’s car came off the starting line and started to lose traction early. As the revs came way up the fuel volume heading into the engine skyrocketed and when McMillan pedaled the car in an attempt to get it settled down, the engine exploded like nothing we had ever seen before.
It is exceedingly rare that an explosion vaporizes the intake manifold and everything around it but that is what happened. You will see the supercharger and everything else from the heads up get either blown apart or simply launched off of the engine. It even managed to rip the spark plug shields off of the cylinder heads.
This was one of those perfect storm situations where a driver trying to do his job and win a round on Sunday was instead rewarded with an explosion so strong they probably felt it in Vermont.
Terry was fine, the car will be gone over, and the Amalie Oil team will be thrashing their way down to Englishtown, New Jersey for the race next weekend. The NHRA is on a “four in a row” streak over the month of June and that means teams can nary afford much stuff like this happening.
Amazing.
First thought was Doug Herbert nuclear detonation on the line at the finals. One of the worst in the less than 100% nitro era. Hopefully Terry is okay body and pocket book. First race that it seemed that he could have won on performance and not luck.