The IHRA get credit for debuting the category during their 1990 season after flirting with it by running top sportsman quick eight shootouts during previous years. The new heads-up eliminator was as wild and unpredictable as anything in drag racing had ever been and that’s pretty evident in this video as we see racer Eddie Harris wreck his beautiful, blown Pontiac Firebird at NRP.
Like the facility itself, pro mod has changed a lot over the years but the roots of the class and the underlying craziness still exist. When we look at the Harris crash, it seems to be pretty indicative of what happens when fluid gets under the rear tires and the driver effectively becomes a passenger.
The steel guardrails took the impact well and actually acted like a big shock absorber before sending the car across the track and that’s when the real violence began. The rolls that this thing goes through are hard to watch and what may be even harder is seeing the safety guys trying to get into the car to get Harris out. Eventually he comes out in one piece and seems to be ok, but the Pontiac is completely decimated.
When fans attend modern pro mod races at Norwalk they see cars that will be running over 250mph. When this video was made they were running middle to low 6s and 200 was still a pretty big number on the board. My how things have changed…all the things but the danger.
I had a pretty decent vantage point for this one…on top of the suite building.
The years prior, Harris had a blown alcohol dragster with a powerglide and a delay box that would run low 7’s and high 6’s. Tall wing, Garlits tiny front tires, zoomies, two parachutes. It would have been right at home in 2009 as a Top Dragster car. I raced him late one evening at this same track during the Halloween Classic with me dialed 8.60-something and Eddie dialed in the low 7’s. Waiting for him to catch me was, how do you say, interesting considering I had only run Super Comp to that point and all of us were in the 148-160 MPH range back then.
I gave him the stripe by a wide margin not having any idea how to be chased in this manner. Luckily he broke out worse than I screwed up.