Kalitta’s death needs to make difference

By TONY FABRIZIO
Media General News Service
Published: June 25, 2008

With two fatalities and a third horrific crash in its Funny Car class since March 2007, the NHRA needs to wake up to the fact it has a safety crisis on par with what NASCAR faced after Dale Earnhardt and three other drivers were killed in 2000-01.
Tampa Bay area resident Scott Kalitta’s death Saturday at Englishtown, N.J., came only 15 months after Eric Medlen suffered fatal injuries while testing at Gainesville Raceway. In September, 14-time Funny Car champion John Force was nearly killed in a crash at Ennis, Texas.
Medlen suffered lethal head injuries from a condition known as tire shake. Force crashed spectacularly after Kenny Bernstein clipped a timing cone and a foam block shot into Force’s lane, causing a tire failure.
Kalitta was killed after his engine exploded near the finish line, preventing his parachute from working, and his car hit a concrete post at the end of a sand-filled runoff area.
“We really don’t want to comment until we’ve had a chance to conduct our investigation,” NHRA vice president Jerry Archambeault said Monday.
The crashes had different circumstances, indicating that the NHRA and the drag-racing industry need to take the same multi-faceted approach to safety improvements that NASCAR, its tracks and its team owners have taken this decade.
After Medlen’s death, Force brought in safety experts, including engineer John Melvin, and improvements were quickly made to driver protection, including a larger roll cage with padding to cradle the driver’s head. Force also founded the Eric Medlen Foundation, which is designing the Funny Car of the future.
Now it’s time for the NHRA to look at, among other things, inadequacies at aging tracks that were built for speeds much slower than 330 mph.
Drivers say the runoff area at Englishtown’s 43-year-old Old Bridge Township Raceway Park is insufficient.
“Part of me is very upset that over the years these cars have continued to go quicker and faster and NHRA hasn’t continued to give us the real estate, whatever that formula or whatever that percentage is,” three-time Funny Car champion Tony Pedregon told ESPN. “They haven’t lengthened the shutdown area of this facility.”
Between May 2007 and February 2008, NASCAR lost drivers Kenny Irwin, Adam Petty, Tony Roper and Earnhardt, arguably the greatest stock-car driver of all-time. Under intense media scrutiny in the months and years that followed, NASCAR designed and implemented a safer car, the tracks installed energy-absorbing barriers on their concrete walls, and teams and vendors improved harnesses, seats and helmets.
Similarly, the Indy Racing League has made several advancements in safety, although open-wheel racing on high-banked ovals remains extremely hazardous.
The NHRA and the drag-racing industry won’t be subjected to intense scrutiny, but they needs to react with the same sense of purpose to protect its drivers.
Kalitta, 46, was the cousin of Top Fuel driver Doug Kalitta and the son of drag-racing icon Connie Kalitta, who helped launch the career of Shirley Muldowney and was played by Beau Bridges in the Muldowney film “Heart Like a Wheel.” Connie was his son’s crew chief.
Although he grew up in Mount Clemens, Mich., Scott lived in Snead Island, near Palmetto, with his wife, Kathy, and sons Corey (14) and Colin (8).
He began and ended his NHRA career at Englishtown 26 years apart. In between, he won 17 times in the Top Fuel class and once in Funny Car. He came out of retirement twice: first in 1999 and again in 2003.
Now, surviving drivers have to deal with the reality that driving an NHRA Funny Car is the most dangerous job in major American motor sports.
“With Eric’s and then John’s accident, it got to the full front of your mind, and then you have to forget about it,” driver Ron Capps told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “You think it’s not going to happen again. And then Scott has his accident.”
Now, the NHRA has a chance to make Scott Kalitta’s tragic death mean something.