Crashes Force Safety to the Forefront.(Competition)

Byline: Mark Vaugn

John Force's horrific crash at Dallas this year (Competition, Oct. 1), which destroyed his car and sent him to the hospital, where he got pins, screws, splints and stitches in every extremity except his head, focused the sport of drag racing on safety improvements as nothing had done before. While other tragedies have led to improvements to Top Fuel cars in recent years, including sheetmetal covering the roll cages and controls on nitro percentages in fuel, Force's crash looks to give the most powerful cars in the sport a complete safety overhaul.

Just as Jackie Stewart did for Formula One several decades ago, Force is having a profound effect on safety in drag racing. Funny Cars have not been re-engineered since either the late 1980s/early '90s, according to NHRA senior vice president of racing operations Graham Light, or since the 1970s, according to Funny Car driver Ron Capps.

"I drive a nostalgia Funny Car every year. They have 2500 hp. Modern cars have 8000 hp and have the same chassis," Capps said. "These things are dinosaurs."

The multicar Force and Schumacher teams, and others, are updating cars for next year. But they are making changes on their own, based on designs they've come up with independently. Some teams are waiting for direction from the NHRA.

"The NHRA needs to tell us what to do with the chassis," Capps said.

The NHRA is working on that.