This is some of the most incredible video we have ever seen come out of a drag strip. The calamity happened last weekend during a no-prep race at Wilkesboro Dragway. The Mustang you are about to see was beautiful car that appeared to have the best of the best stuff on it from front to back. By the time the run was over, the machine was torn in half, a spectator was injured, and amazingly the driver was not badly hurt.
Long story short, the driver made a decision to pedal the Mustang down track when the car was not headed in a straight line. This brought about a series of events that will make your eyes bug out of your head. The car makes a move left and heads for a section of steel guardrail between two sets of concrete barrier walls. Hitting the guardrail the Mustang launches into a barrel roll and contacts the steel beam holding the scoreboard up almost dead on with the rear axle. The flying parts and debris injured a young woman who was watching at the top end. She will make a full recovery.
Incredibly the back half of the car is just torn out like it was made of paper. The massive beam holding the score board was dented and mildly bent but it definitely won this fight. It’s almost more mind boggling that the scoreboard did not fall over.
This accident is not an indictment of no prep racing and it was not “caused” by the steel guardrail. The root cause was the down track pedal when the car was not headed in a straight line. Prep or not, this was not going to end well for the Mustang. Yes, it ended WORSE because of the guardrail but the “cause” was not the rail itself. Down track pedaling typically does not end well, from no-prep Mustangs to A/fuel dragsters, and nitro funny cars. Dangerous stuff.
Just about every single “No Prep” event has multiple crashes like this. A good majority of the cars look like they just finished doing 50 laps at a demo car derby because they’ve hit the wall at some point. But they all think racing on a prepped track is for wimps! Lmao. No prep racing sucks. Unless you like standing around listening to a track sweeper for hours as the track gets cleaned up again and again and again.
Damn!!!!!!!!
Dude’s lucky to be alive
The nose-high, almost gasser stance of the Fox body was the reason the car climbed the crappy Armco so easily. All of the other variables in place (low-prep, large amounts of power, Jersey barrier+Armco, spectators uncontrolled and waaaaaay too close to the track in numerous areas, murderous placement of the scoreboards, etc.) compounded what should have been just a wall-slapper. Instead, it was mere inches from being fatal due to a mountain of poor decisions.
Gee, more no-prep destruction. What a surprise.
It WILL happen that someone(s) in the staging lanes (to make it cool , no prep don’t you know) is going to catch a piston in the forehead, or get cut in two by a flywheel . Then everyone will wring their hands about the need for safety, more tracks will be shut down and we’ll all suffer. It’s a perfect example of an activity NOT willing to police itself until the attorneys descend like a ton of bricks.
The geniuses at this track even had a wheelchair bound person in the staging lanes 6′ from someone doing a burnout. Brilliant!
There’s a whole lot of luck involved in the generally good outcome of this crash. There’s spectators at the top end that barely missed catching a Fox in the face at 100 MPH as well as all the black ball cap morons milling around in the staging lanes to be cool.
I don’t feel sorry for the car owner. He was stupid to participate in this dumpster fire.
He wasn’t the first one to hit the armco in that spot.
Wonder what happened? Looked like the car unloaded then things started going south.
I feel bad for the driver but I’m always looking to learn how to hopefully avoid stuff like this.
theres a great video on the SRC Garage youtube channel, that’s the team of the S10 in the other lane. Old boy goes into detail about just how he saw this happen and how to deal with no prep tracks in general.
No prep on the track surface is one thing, no safety down track is ridiculous. There is obviously a lot of cash flying around at these events, the track owners need to spend some on the tracks, this is not much safer than racing on the street, Maybe less safe when you have steel poles adjacent to the “fence”.
I am amazed that they let people line the sides of the track like that. If that car or any other gets loose sooner then there are going to be several people hurt or killed. I have disliked the crowds at the starting line ever since it became a thing. Nothing good can come from stuff like this and as soon as an accident occurs we all face the possibility of losing yet another track.
Congratulations you finally hurt a spectator. and it’s all over Yahoo.
Wait til they mow a bunch down on the starting line.
This is the new face of drag racing
I can’t tell you how much it pisses me off that there’s track operators (and MANY of them) that participate in this crap.
They pimp out for a few bucks and the rest of the sport suffers. Way to go Wilkesboro Mensa candidates!
When I was racing Redding Drag Strip my home track. Even though I raced the Heritage series I would test from time to time there. The operator used to keep pretty close tabs on who was on the starting line.
The current operator is big into the 1/8 mile no time, gansta flat billed cap starting line full of dumbasses drag racing.
The first time I saw it at Redding I was looking around to see if the track manager was aware of what was going on and the liability issues that were so obvious with the amount of people standing on the starting line during this circus.
I finally saw her. She, yes she was standing right in the middle of the crowd whooping it up with the rest of them
The young woman hit by the car, Amber, had her arm broken in four places. Man, if I were her father and had encouraged her to be there, that would be pretty tough to deal with. Very unsafe set up. Pedaling it didn’t help, to be sure, but the track conditions and barriers left no room for any kind of mishap. Don’t think I’d want to run there. And yeah, it probably will be more difficult or expensive for the track to remain insured and/or open going forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkHBz5w3_j0
How anyone can be surprised someone got hurt is beyond me. You have dozens!! of people standing all over the starting line while cars are doing their burnouts and fans 6′ from the racing surface on the big end. This is what you get when you have a race track full of people who think those idiots on street outlaws are gods and track operators with no regard for safety. Idiots.
Once again, 40 people in the grandstands and 500 people in the burn out box.
I never had any problem doing healthy burnouts all by myself with my stock /6 Darts but a car with 2500HP needs “help” from EVERY person who bought a ticket?! Brilliant!!!!
The last paragraph of this article written by Mr Lohnes is an incredible and pathetic excuse filled explanation of no prep racing that purposely misses the point. Maybe for economic reasons who knows.
Does the NHRA know you are willing to compare such an irresponsible form of drag racing with the legitimate version that you are the so called current voice of on national tv?