The 2016 J&A Service NHRA Pro Mod Series season has been a wild one. There have been great races, there have been massive wrecks, and there have been some unbelievable driving jobs tying it all together. There are just two races left in the NHRA pro mod season and the points standings show Rickie Smith leading all comers by 94 points. That’s a bunch but it was far larger just a few weeks ago and competitors have been gunning for him and winning in the early rounds. Smith will need to race hard and race smart this weekend at the 2016 NHRA AAA Midwest Nationals in order to protect his lead and effectively lock up a championship. He’ll also need to avoid the fate that Adam Flamholc suffered during the 2013 iteration of the race that saw him suffer one of the worst crashes in the classes history.
You’ll see Flamholc come off the starting line and the Camaro make a near immediate move to the right. Driving the car like the pro that he is, Flamholc brings it back into the groove but the more it moves the less happy it looks with the nose hunting around left and right. Finally, just past the eighth mile with the car traveling over 200mph, something goes very wrong and the car makes an immediate and hard left hand turn into the wall. The front end shatters and explodes, stuff goes everywhere, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the worst was yet to come.
Flamholc’s car goes into a sickening series of flips and rolls that top virtually anything we have ever seen. Thankfully after a trip to the hospital, Flamholc was deemed to be OK and he is still very active in the sport today competing in the USA and this season in Russia!
One of the most impressive parts of this whole scene is the structural integrity of the cage. Despite the horrible nature of this ride, the car seems to have held together very well.
