While we cannot possibly predict anything about the performances at the 2014 Street Car Super Nationals we car certainly use history as a guide to tell you that there will likely be some insanely fast runs as well as some insanely wicked wrecks. This is a high stakes poker type of race with the most powerful door cars in the world running flat out for the full quarter mile and anything can and will happen. Case in point, Rick Snavely’s terrifying wreck that we caught on film in 2011. The good news is that while Snavley didn’t walk away from this crash he has fully recovered and is back to mixing it up on the strip in a powerful turbocharged Pro Mod. Snavley played the roll of spoiler at the 2014 NHRA Las Vegas race during pro mod eliminations. He showed up out of nowhere and ran something like 253mph, sending other competitors back to their trailers wondering who the heck this guy was. He knows the air, he knows the track and he’ll be bad fast this year.
Air was Snavley’s mortal enemy in this instance as you will see that his late model GTO bodied car gets sideways and begins to catch some under it before taking flight, skidding on its nose momentarily, and then flying over the wall into the rocky dirt that lines the outside of the barrier at Las Vegas. The car was lost in a cloud of dust but pencil rolled nearly a dozen times, coming to a rest as a busted heap and leaving Snavley badly banged up inside. He was taken to the hospital but recovered fully and as we mentioned, will be back to terrorize the other racers this year. This was a bad ride for Rick and one of the most violent wrecks out cameras have ever captured.
That type of accident where the car takes flight because of the spoiler catching air and lifting the car seems to be quite common. I wonder if having trap doors on the spoiler that open when air gets under them would help ?