I must confess, I'm not a fan of drag racing; but I've watched it now and again on television, and those involved seem to enjoy themselves. That probably can't be said of 'funny car' driver Russ Parker at a recent event in Oregon. His cockpit camera recorded what happened.
That would be a monumental "Oops!", right there . . .
Peter
I'm amazed how composed he was, it only took a second or two to get on the brakes. Then my favorite part, he inspects the failure point almost before he's stopped.
ReplyDeleteI think the steering wheel is *supposed* to not be firmly attached, so as to be able to extract the driver more easily in the case of a bad crash...but the driver is also supposed to know not to pull the thing upwards.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe there's supposed to be a cotter pin holding it together. One that's strong enough to resist a casual tug, but weak enough that a good, hard pull will shear it easily.
You can see the pin that supposed to hold it is out of place.
ReplyDeleteI laugh every time I see it. His "hand ballet" is so funny to me. I've heard old time pilots that had to feather an engine while increasing throttle on the others went thru similar one handed ballet performances....
That's the ultimate Holy Shit!!! moment.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor used to race class A Altered, and his worst experience was having the brake lever come off in his hand. He managed to get the car stopped in time.
Thanks for the post.
The steering shaft broke where a hole was drilled.
ReplyDeleteIt's in the comments with the vid and there was a lot of detailed analysis when it happened on a couple of the car forums.
The QD is much closer to the wheel than where the break is.
A fellow in a sprint car had the outer ring of his wheel break off, he was still steering with a spoke attached to the center hub. It apparently demoralized the competition to see the guy toss the wheel out of the cockpit at speed and continue on.
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