Tennessee Drag Racing Crash

My husband and his father have been drag racing together for years and it’s brought them a lot of joy. It gives them a lot of opportunity to spend time together doing something fun and active. They have to drive pretty far as there are not a lot of strips in Minnesota so they get to spend a lot of time on the road together as well. Being that my husband is so into this, I am as well!! So, anytime there’s something on the news about drag racing, my ears always perk up. This is a picture of their current dragster.

Last night as I was watching the news, there was a piece on a charity event down in Selmer, Tennessee called Cars for Kids that went tragically wrong. This town has been doing this event for 18 years and it always ends with the drivers doing a burn out. The true reason drag racers do this is that is actually lays warm rubber across the starting line to give the racer some added traction. There has never been an accident at their show until this year when pro drag racing driver Troy Critchley lost control of his car and six by-standers lost their lives. The accident also injured at least 20 other people including a 5-year old boy.

Thankfully, there are no criminal charges being brought against this driver. This is just such a sad situation. It certainly wasn’t his fault, but I’m sure he’s going to blame himself for this accident for the rest of his life. There was a small stretch of guard rail where he started, but it didn’t stretch the entire length of where ended up driving his car. One by-stander said that even if there had been a guard rail for the entire stretch, it wouldn’t have mattered. I happen to agree. There’s a reason at the race track that the guard rails are made of cement.

Also on the driver’s behalf, several different news agencies reported that he has an immaculate safety record. His former race team boss from Australia even said that you just don’t get to where he’s gotten without the respecting safety, I have to agree with him. He has more than 20 years of drag racing experience both in Australia where he got his start and here in the US. This is a picture of his car before the accident.

It seems that he was only supposed to go about 50 feet but he ended up going much further than that. The car must have gotten away from him. I read a few forums where drag racers were talking about the tragedy and they seem to think that the car did get away from him, he got off the gas, he tried to correct it and then got back on the gas again which is when it plowed into the crowd. The pro-mod cars (which is what Troy was driving) are among the most unpredictable drag racing vehicles on a smooth and level racing surface that has been specially prepared with racing compounds. Troy was on a city street, it was sloped and I’m sure had no traction at all.

Many of the articles that I read all stated that the engine was heard to be revving loudly before taking off. Hmm, I guess they weren’t listening to the other cars? This is what they do!! When doing a burn out, the driver revs the engine up, spins the tires and then lets go so they go a little ways down the track.

I guess the biggest thing I wanted to share was that we should all remember everyone down in Tennessee today, including the driver. They were trying to do something good and it ended horribly wrong. Drag racing is an awesome sport, especially in the correct environment, on a proper race track.

Beth Riegger
Keys 2 Success
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