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NHRA Funny Car Driver

CaptnKirk

CaptnKirk

Lifer
Has been seriously injured in a top-end cross-over collision with Kenny Brenstein
in the 2nd round of eliminations in Sundays Dallas Championship Event.

Bernstein's car hit the timing cone at the finish line, which threw the cone into and under Force's car as both vehicles were exceeding 300 MPH.
Forces car blew out a tire, crosses the track and was collected by Bernstein's car.

Both went into the wall, and Force's car broke apart, shearing the roll cage and drivers compartment from tha chassis
just where the clutch can sits below the drivers legs.
John's legs were exposed as the cage carened down the track, leaving the front end of the car, including the motor, coasting the length of the track into the sandtrap.

Force had his left leg discolated and compound fractured near the ankle, his right leg was abraded to the bone at the knee
grinding muscle, tendons, and ligaments to the bone.
His left hand was severly dislocated, and he has broken fingers on his right hand.

Article from NHRA

Video

He may have suffered a career ending injury, but he is a tough old bird, and will try to drive again in about a month.

He's in fourth place in the points chase.
 
When you consider the power of a top fuel car and the speed of the wreck, it's amazing the relatively minor extent of his injuries by comparison. Inside those cars is the safest place to be when they blow up.

I remember when blowers used to blow off cars and hurl 100s of feet into the air before landing and killing spectators. Now they require kevlar blankets and stuff around the blowers.

For those unfamiliar, these cars are running mechanically fuel injected 500 cubic inch V8s running like 40-50 lbs of boost on fuel that is roughly 2.5 times the power per cubic inch. The blower on those cars takes more power to spin than most peoples *fast* street cars make.... and the engines put out somewhere between 7,000-8,000 HP... determined by physics as no dyno can be made to measure that much...

Actually, after all that, I don't even know if this was alcohol or fuel...
 
Ouch, that sounds like a career ender with all that muscle lost in the leg. The bones and all that can heal, but the muscles and tendons will never be the same.
 
Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
Ouch, that sounds like a career ender with all that muscle lost in the leg. The bones and all that can heal, but the muscles and tendons will never be the same.
Click to expand...

fortunately his daughter is more than capable of continuing the family name in these sports
 
But can she give an interview like John Force did? I mean, his post race interviews were something else. The smart reports just handed over the mic and took it back when they ran out of time.
 
Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
But can she give an interview like John Force did? I mean, his post race interviews were something else. The smart reports just handed over the mic and took it back when they ran out of time.
Click to expand...

Thats john ....:beer:



Yea I got it on my DVR but they gave it away before I saw it,saying he was in a crash and it would be up in 45 minutes since we get the recorded version.


That was a bad wreck and watching the front end continue all the way to the end of the track was kinda creepy...


John will be back,have no doubt...😎
 
Poor Bernstein is getting blamed for this everywhere. The day it happened, I saw the wreck on ESPN and they said Bernstein went into Force's lane and hit him. Not true.

Now we have this post where it has misinformation. I am not flaming the OP for the post as he is just quoting, but I wish the news would look at the footage and describe it correctly.

I do not know if the cones were part of the cause, but they should not have caused his car to break like it did. In the footage I saw, the rear wheels, and the cage where Force is sitting come off the car and stop pretty quickly against the wall (in his lane). The rest of the car crosses over and hits Bernstein. I had to play it over quite a bit before I could tell what actually happened because the stories going along with the video did not make any sense.

In the NHRA updates linked by the OP, even Force says he doesn't know why his car pulled itself apart like that.

Sorry for the slight rant about the news getting things wrong even when they have video footage. 😀
 
Originally posted by: fenrir
Poor Bernstein is getting blamed for this everywhere. The day it happened, I saw the wreck on ESPN and they said Bernstein went into Force's lane and hit him. Not true.

Now we have this post where it has misinformation. I am not flaming the OP for the post as he is just quoting, but I wish the news would look at the footage and describe it correctly.

I do not know if the cones were part of the cause, but they should not have caused his car to break like it did. In the footage I saw, the rear wheels, and the cage where Force is sitting come off the car and stop pretty quickly against the wall (in his lane). The rest of the car crosses over and hits Bernstein. I had to play it over quite a bit before I could tell what actually happened because the stories going along with the video did not make any sense.

In the NHRA updates linked by the OP, even Force says he doesn't know why his car pulled itself apart like that.

Sorry for the slight rant about the news getting things wrong even when they have video footage. 😀
Click to expand...



I did Tech for NHRA for 10+ years, and am fairly familiar with these vehicles.

If you watch the sequence, you see Kenny's car move to the centerline and disrupt the timing reflector (cone) which is a block of faom
with a reflector mounted on each side to reflect the beam back to the timing light.

The instant that the cone hits the right rear tire of Forces car that tire disinigtates - the impact with the cone (or the metal frame of the reflector element)
the tire cutts down throwing debris up into the composite body, and the right side spillplate fails.
No spillplate on the right upsets the aerodynamic balance, as the pressue vents out the removed side, and the vehicle veers to that side -
and crosses in front of Bernstien's vehicle, which 'collects' the vehicle at impact.
Both go into the right wall, and the bodys detach from their mounts, which by design, also release the parachutes.

John's vehicle shears off from the forward structure, and since it is attached to the parachute anchor point, comes to a stop quickly.

Re-read the original post - and watch the video again . . stopping it when you want to study things.



 
Originally posted by: CaptnKirk
I did Tech for NHRA for 10+ years, and am fairly familiar with these vehicles.

If you watch the sequence, you see Kenny's car move to the centerline and disrupt the timing reflector (cone) which is a block of faom
with a reflector mounted on each side to reflect the beam back to the timing light.

The instant that the cone hits the right rear tire of Forces car that tire disinigtates - the impact with the cone (or the metal frame of the reflector element)
the tire cutts down throwing debris up into the composite body, and the right side spillplate fails.
No spillplate on the right upsets the aerodynamic balance, as the pressue vents out the removed side, and the vehicle veers to that side -
and crosses in front of Bernstien's vehicle, which 'collects' the vehicle at impact.
Both go into the right wall, and the bodys detach from their mounts, which by design, also release the parachutes.

John's vehicle shears off from the forward structure, and since it is attached to the parachute anchor point, comes to a stop quickly.

Re-read the original post - and watch the video again . . stopping it when you want to study things.
Click to expand...

I am sorry, but we must be watching a different video. I watched the NHRA linked videos, and it is as I described. From your description, it sounds like you are saying that Force was still sitting in the part that crossed over and hit Bernstein. That simply is not the case. If I misunderstood, sorry. 😀

I don't want to have one small part of what I posted deter from most of what I wrote. I understand why his tire disintegrated (due to the cone), but I have a hard time believing that the cone is the only cause of his car pulling apart like that. I would guess that there was some other issue that allowed his car to pull apart when his chute deployed. Sure, the cone could be one factor that initiated a chain of events.

From the post of the news report it said "Both went into the wall, and Force's car broke apart, shearing the roll cage and drivers compartment from the chassis" which was not what happened. Force's car had already sheared apart before crossing over. Even ESPN was reporting that Bernstein's car crossed over and hit Force. I was just complaining about the news reporting things incorrectly when they even had video footage.
 
NHRA has updated their John Force incident information, which validates that the car separated when the tire disintegrated

This appears to be a second manifestation of what happened to Medlin during testing in Florida after the Gatornational race.
Something within the was strengthened to protect the drivers head and neck, but there is an unknown in the chassis integrity -
Medlin's car did something that had not been seen before, and this may be a simular event.



. . and Wally Parks, NHRA founder has passed away
 
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