It was an incredible and scary finish to the nitro funny car category as Robert Hight took his AAA sponsored Chevrolet Camaro across the finish line at the sponsor’s race just before the car exploded sending a ball of fire over the driver and the body sky high. What you cannot see in this shot is the fact that the body soared skyward, the wind caught it, and it actually contacted the side of the jumbotron. No one was hurt and the body was heaved back onto the track by NHRA Safety Safari staff to be hauled away with the remains of the car. Hight himself walked away from the wreck but was taken to a local medical facility to be checked out. At the time of this writing no word has come from John Force Racing regarding potential injuries to Robert. So what happened? The bane of every nitro tuner and driver happened. Dropped cylinders down track.
As we can see in the video, there’s raw fuel exiting the zoomie pipe on the driver’s left side of the car. This is a problem because it means that the piston in that hole is running into liquid nitromethane and jackhammering the motor spart every time it comes up in the bore.
During a racing situation drivers who would normally lift or shut the car off keep the hammer down to win rounds, especially during the NHRA’s playoff season which is underway right now. The engine finally had enough, blew up, and when the air got under the cracked body, it tore it apart like a giant pair of shears.
John Force racing and the NHRA tour have a weekend off coming up but the boys in the fabrication shop at JFR will be building a new funny car or perhaps making extensive repairs to this one.
Here is video of where the body went
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoHefxsluNP/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=cw7x2ezzu8vi
That is insane – car body just went through the billboard on the side of the screen!
And because somebody has to say it: At least he wasn’t texting while driving.
Thankfully he had AAA insurance. The deductible must be a doozie.
The crew works so hard to put together a very good race car and then just blow it up like a fire cracker.
I guess you can say he won with a bang.