Terry McMillan may have had an explosion with incredible violence attached to it but Courtney Force had the most horrifying one during the 2017 NHRA New England Nationals. At over 330mph her car grenade and sent her hurtling into the shutdown area with a roadster rather than a coupe. In the video below you will watch Courtney Force endure the worst funny car explosion of her career. This is truly wild.
What caused it? Apparently the blower belt or some parts of it severed a fuel line sending the engine into an instantaneous dead lean situation and causing the full-on calamity you see below. Courtney handled it like a total boss and was OK, continuing to race in her backup car the next day. I actually spoke to her in the pits minutes after this happened and she was already putting the whole thing behind her.
Something of note. If you watch the car, it leaps off the ground after the blast. Why? The concussion of the explosion? No. The reason the car leaps up into the air is because the giant rear tires which are being forced into the track by the thousands of pounds of downforce the body is creating are suddenly released of all that pressure. They react like a compressed spring does when the force compressing it is removed. They have so much energy they literally force the car off the ground.
It takes a special kind of person drive these cars. It takes a really special kind of a person to suffer this deal and then get back into a car like 12 hours later. That type of person is known as a funny car driver.
