The 2024 running motorsports thread

John Force had a huge explosion and crash today at 302 mph. He's hospitalized. Dude is 75. Seriously, stop. I know it's better to burn out than fade away, but at some point you have to quit.

 

That should be his last race. If that isn't a clear signal to him -- and the NHRA, which apparently doesn't have the courage to tell him to hang up the helmet -- I don't know what is. He's been seriously hurt before and come back.

He's a drag racing icon but he's also a stubborn old man in a sport in which years of experience, let alone having quick reflexes aren't enough to keep you safe. He won the race before the engine detonated. Go out that way instead of in a pine box.

 

Rough stuff. Always amazing how anybody walks away from something like this.

 

Wet restart (but not raining) for NASCAR at New Hampshire, and they're going to put on the rain tires.

 

It was honestly probably because of his experience that it wasn't worse that it was. It wasn't like he nodded off and crashed. He won the round, and the car exploded. That wasn't his fault. He more or less saved it. Many a younger driver might not have been able to do that.
I have literally drank beer with John Force more than once. He and I were having a beer when he broke the news to me that Kenny Irwin had been killed.
I just don't want to see the guy needlessly hurt. He has beautiful daughters who are carrying on the family legacy. I've done some drag racing but not at Funny Car speeds. I don't know how much of a rush it creates. Maybe it's a drug for him. Whether John Force ever straps in again or not, he will still do great interviews and draw the best sponsors to the sport.
Most of them have retired, but the well being of many older drag racers actually is personal for me. I know these folks. I don't want to see them get hurt.

 

This is probably my funniest NHRA story. The drag racing community is fairly tight knit.
There is a multi-time NHRA champion who I got to know pretty well. We were close enough that his wife usually kissed me on the cheek when I came around.
We were at a race track one time, and it was time to start getting ready for the next round. He says, "(Wife) is busy. Do you mind watching (son) while I warm up the car? Here."
So you have me - Nobody from Nowhere - who doesn't have have children and doesn't especially like small kids baby sitting a random child of a world champion. It wasn't even really a option. He just handed me a kid. I was like "Uhhhhhhhhhh, OK. I guess. What do I do with him?"

 

I was at NHIS when Irwin got killed, interviewing Richard Petty about the death of his grandson at the same track a month or so earlier. All the motorsports do the best they can, but if you're not prepared to deal with the likelihood of violent death, it's not the sport for you as a fan, let alone participant. It was my favorite sport as a teenager in the '60s, but there were just too many deaths of the top drivers in all forms that I gave it up for decades.

 

That's the great thing about racing. Beating the danger is part of it.
Monte Dutton - who many of us know - had the greatest quote of all time. He said no sane person wants to see death. They want to see death defied.

 

I think one of my proudest moments that would have probably made others mad because I was more or less summoned like a school boy was when I was in a press box once and a pr person tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Snake wants to see you."
What did I do? I got my happy ass on the golf cart and went to the hauler to see why Don Prudhomme said for me to come see him.

 

Watching that footage, I wonder why NHRA drag strips don't have SAFER on the walls?

Are the cars too fast and too big for SAFER to work right? Seems like a no-brainer to me given how brutal drag race accidents can be.