In the wake of what had been an expensive pair of season-opening NHRA events for John Force Racing, it was hoped that Gainesville’s 49th Annual Amalie Oil Gatornationals would see a turn for the better. The sport’s best-known team came into Florida hoping for success rather than becoming another highlight of the evening sports newsreel.
On Friday afternoon, Force’s PEAK Antifreeze Chevrolet was nearing the 660-foot mark when something inside the engine went haywire. Within the space of less than two seconds, another expensive carbon-fiber shell had been turned into confetti-like shrapnel and Force was running nose-first toward the finish line. His voice cracking with emotion, Force stated afterward that the team would be focused on finding a solution to this, even if it meant not making full passes the remainder of the weekend.
So, after qualifying 15th, he fell to daughter Courtney in Round One. Courteny then lost in Round Two on Sunday. In the very next pairing, teammate Robert Hight was lined up against Matt Hagan’s MOPAR Dodge Charger from the Don Schumacher Racing operation. Once again, as the pair reached the 700-foot mark, Hight’s AAA-backed Chevy flopper exploded into flames and shed its skin. Then, unbelievably, Hagan’s car did likewise and both cars now on fire. The wind caught Hagan’s shattered body and flew above the 50-foot Gainesville scoreboards. Hagan won the round, and his team simply field-assembled a spare car to make the semifinals. He would lose to DSR teammate Jack Beckman in the final.
Afterwards, many armchair experts, are crying for changes in the nitro categories: less fuel volume, less tire width, less ignition. For more serious thinkers, it is a rudimentary question of several factors. Perhaps the most common cause for a fuel-burning engine to explode on the back-half of the race track is tire-spin or freewheeling, which in turn drops cylinders. Not having the ability to fire a given cylinder on the compression stroke wreaks havoc on the valvetrain, and once the valvetrain starts eating itself up, things blow up fast. NHRA mandated a change in header angle going into this season reportedly to make the cars more drivable if a cylinder goes out, which in turn may be hindering traction as an unintended consequence.
Then there is an issue of heavier multi-disc clutch assemblies, and how that dynamic might affect engine block and cam stability. One real big-name tuner posted online that his belief was that pre-ignition was occurring inside the intake port as a result of increased ambient heat from blower pressure that might equal the fuel’s 780-degree flash-point. Regardless, we are in the midst of a serious learning curve right now, and everybody – drivers, car owners, and crew chiefs – is focused on solving before somebody gets hurt, or worse.
Funny car racing has never really been funny business. It’s takes a serious effort to push the limit of these machines just to be competitive in the field.,
Winner Jack Beckman, who somewhat discounted most of the above possibilities as the sole immediate cause, had this to say in the post-race interviews in the tower, “A lot of the big explosions you have seen are from dropped cylinders early in the run. We want to leg it to the finish line, but there is too much unburnt fuel to burn in the engine, and you see what the result is.”
“I have a suggestion to make nitro racing safer,” he deadpanned in conclusion. “It’s a Lincoln welder. And then you just weld the trailer doors closed so you can’t unload the cars…”
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