Lots of things in drag racing have changed over the years. One thing that hasn’t? Physics. This is the reason why fuel altereds at the meanest, weirdest, wildest, and most unforgiving cars the sport has ever devised. They lack to everything but power. They lack for weight, wheelbase, downforce, traction, directional control, all of it. On paper they are weird. On the track they are incredible, but they also come with the same dangers of a loaded gun with a hair trigger. Sometimes they simply jut go off. That’s exactly the scene we are about to relive here. You’ll be riding on the top of the fuel altered being driven by Bobby Marriott as it launches at North Star Dragway (RIP) and attempts an eighth mile rip.
We say attempts because things go horrendously wrong on all fronts. The engine explodes, the thing loses a rear tire, the car hammers the wall, and at some point in all of this badness, Marriott himself is knocked out cold. This is why you’ll see the car kind of just wander off into the cabbage after things start to calm down.
There is not only the video there is an amazing photo sequence that captures the whole calamity in the the kind of stunning stop action fashion that you understand how bad it really was. Things happen so fast in the car but on film they are captured forever. Wild!
