In an incident that was eerily similar to Larry Dixon’s at the NHRA Gatornationals, Australian top fuel hero Phil Lamattina’s dragster split in two during a run at Willowbank Raceway last weekend and took flight, mashing into the wall, banging Lamattina up and leaving a car with six runs on it as a mangled and ultimately destroyed hunk of junk.
While we do not have the technology here to lay the footage of Dixon’s wreck next to this one, they seem to be mirror images of each other. The cars were both pulling through the middle of the track and gaining speed like crazy before a couple of chassis tubes failed, breaking the car in two and leaving Lamattina as a helpless passenger sitting inside an unguided missile. Lamattina’s injuries (as we have heard them) deal with vertebrae and rib issues mostly. Why? Basically where Dixon got lucky, Lamattina did not. You will see the remains of the car smash down hard on the wall and then bounce back on the track and if we had to guess, it was that wall smash that caused the injuries to Lamattina.
We wish Phil the best and in the back of our mind we’re forced to wonder if we have advanced to a new era of top fuel racing after a pair of these incidents. Gone are the blow overs of yore and here are the flying capsules of today.
Not lucky like the other guy, is right. That was too bizarre to happen twice.
I wonder if it’s time to mount some sort of up-down accelerometer on the chassis tubes in the middle of the car and see if there isn’t maybe resonance going on there mid-track. This deal where the chassis just buckles up is ridiculous.
Could it be happening because of the clutch malfunctioning and hooking up all at once at that point ?
They are designed to arch like that but when they service those cars after a run I have never seen any crew guys pull body panels off and check that area for cracks or anything at all. I’m an old guy so maybe it’s just me but you would think somebody would be checking every inch of those things after a pass.
We’re old guys pondering over what any child could see needs fixing.
I was parked outside at the end of the shutdown run watching the races(too broke to get in so I sat on the roof of my FC), this one looked nasty even from 200 metres away. Hope Phil recovers soon.