Where's the outrage?

[rpmmutant]

Scott Kalitta makes the second driver in two years to die in NHRA. Include John Force's crash that almost killed him last year and that's three pretty brutal crashes.
In any other sport, NASCAR and boxing included, two deaths in two years would bring calls for banning the sport. Too dangerous. Too barbaric. Who wants to see people die while competing?
I haven't seen the same kind of outrage after two drag racers are killed. Is it because it's kind of expected in drag racing that something terribly wrong could happen in any race? Or is it that people really don't care about drag racers?

 

[Cadet]

It's not that I don't care, it's that I almost expect it. Sad but true. "Gentlemen, start your coffins."

 

[TheMethod]

I don't think anybody reallly knows anything about drag racing, so they don't much care. I'll bet 98 percent of this country doesn't know that two drag racers have died in two years. In fact, I didn't know that until just now, and I work in the sports department at a newspaper.

If it was boxing or MMA, people would definitely be outraged, but I think it's because there's just something about hand-to-hand combat that seems more gruesome.

 

[pallister]

No one really cares about boxing or MMA, either, unless it's one of a handful of well-known boxers. When it comes to tragedy in sports, the outrage is directly proportional to a given sport's popularity. Doesn't make the Kalitta tragedy any less significant than the Dale Earnhardt tragedy, but that's the way it is.

 

[imjustagirl]

Doesn't make the Kalitta tragedy any less significant than the Dale Earnhardt tragedy, but that's the way it is.

This may show what a terrible person I am, but it is less significant. Is it less tragic? No. But Earnhardt's death rattled NASCAR to its core, and Kalitta's just won't have that effect.

Medlen's did, but only because Force made the NHRA get up to date on its safety equipment and started the Eric Medlen Project to improve the safety of the cars. That, he said, saved his life at Texas.

 

[Cadet]

See, I don't think boxing would get that reaction, but I think MMA would because of it's newness. We fear what we don't understand. When college football players are severely injured these days, we comment on the tragedy but don't question the brutality of the sport the way we did at the turn of last century.

 

[BTExpress]

My outrage is reserved for the 25,000 who die on the highways because of alcohol.

 

[93Devil]

Has there been a cause to what made his car blow up?

Tough to be pissed if you don't know what to be pissed at.

 

[Highway 101]

Death in NHRA...

Expected is not the word.
Anticipated isn't it either.
Understood is close.

Respect doesn't justify.

I have never met any group of "athletes" so daring, bravado, fearless, with so much "Live for the Moment" attitude as I did one weekend in Minnesota covering an NHRA event. They knew they put their life on the line.

The winner walked in the media room and asked, "Ya'll got a beer in here? Gimme one."

At that moment, he only cared about that moment. Tomorrow may as well have been year 2025.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Has there been a cause to what made his car blow up?

Tough to be pissed if you don't know what to be pissed at.

Sometimes top fuel cars (both dragsters and funny cars) just blow up due to the stress they're put through. Remember, this is a 500ci hemi V8 with a supercharger running a 90-10 nitromethane-methanol mix making at least 8,000 horsepower, making the car run at speeds of over 330 mph. It's out there on the hoary edges of control in the first place. There probably isn't enough left of the engine to determine a root cause.

Every so often they blow up. They just do. And everyone involved is aware of the possibility. NHRA funny car drivers wear serious fire-protection equipment. At one point a decade or so ago, John Force's engines were so far out on the bleeding edge that he was fireballing every other week and he made a joke out of it by painting flames on all his fiberglass car bodies.

As noted on the other thread, it's highly doubtful that the fire killed Scott Kalitta. That was a hell of an impact.

 

[playthrough]

More than one driver after Kalitta's death noted that the track there is too short (i.e., not enough runoff space past the quarter-mile) to accommodate potentially out-of-control dragsters. It was built decades ago before anyone dreamed of 330 mph nitro cars. And they say it's not the only such track on the NHRA schedule. There's the outrage if you ask me.

Then again, the drivers aren't boycotting. They know exactly what they've signed up for.

 

[HejiraHenry]

I was a drag-racing fan when i was a kid and have tried to keep at least vaguely aware of what happens since then. And, honestly, I'm shocked to learn that only two people have been killed in the last two years.

 

[imjustagirl]

Only two in NHRA, Hejira. Don't know about the many smaller levels.

 

[BrianGriffin]

The difference between a death in an auto race, particularly an obscure sport like drag racing, and boxing is in auto racing people die in an accident. In boxing/MMA, someone gets bludgeoned to death by another man. Somebody commits legal manslaughter. There will never be the same outrage for auto racing deaths as boxing/MMA because of that.

I didn't get the same sense that people were outraged with Dale Earnhardt's death in the same way they were outraged when Boom Boom Mancini killed Duk Koo Kim.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

The difference between a death in an auto race, particularly an obscure sport like drag racing, and boxing is in auto racing people die in an accident. In boxing/MMA, someone gets bludgeoned to death by another man. Somebody commits legal manslaughter. There will never be the same outrage for auto racing deaths as boxing/MMA because of that.

I didn't get the same sense that people were outraged with Dale Earnhardt's death in the same way they were outraged when Boom Boom Mancini killed Duk Koo Kim.

Oh, but they were. Maybe more so. Earnhardt's death was the event that let some people force NASCAR to face up to some things, including the fact that you can order your drivers to use needed safety equipment like full-face helmets and HANS devices. And this was Dale Earnhardt; people knew who he was.

There was probably more outrage over the fact that nothing was done by NASCAR after two lesser-known drivers (one of them Richard Petty's grandson) had died the previous year in separate wrecks at New Hampshire that were similar to the Earnhardt wreck.

 

[Stone Cane]

ok, naive question -- can't they extend the track? looks like plenty of room on the northeast end, although maybe they don't own that land?

 

[BrianGriffin]

The difference between a death in an auto race, particularly an obscure sport like drag racing, and boxing is in auto racing people die in an accident. In boxing/MMA, someone gets bludgeoned to death by another man. Somebody commits legal manslaughter. There will never be the same outrage for auto racing deaths as boxing/MMA because of that.

I didn't get the same sense that people were outraged with Dale Earnhardt's death in the same way they were outraged when Boom Boom Mancini killed Duk Koo Kim.

Oh, but they were. Maybe more so. Earnhardt's death was the event that let some people force NASCAR to face up to some things, including the fact that you can order your drivers to use needed safety equipment like full-face helmets and HANS devices. And this was Dale Earnhardt; people knew who he was.

There was probably more outrage over the fact that nothing was done by NASCAR after two lesser-known drivers (one of them Richard Petty's grandson) had died the previous year in separate wrecks at New Hampshire that were similar to the Earnhardt wreck.

I don't know if I agree. It was different outrage. There was outrage over the governing of NASCAR. There was outrage over the very existence of boxing. One man bludgeoned another man to death on national TV. That, to me, had a profound societal impact.

Shortly after the fight, the fight's referee committed suicide as did Duk Koo Kim's mother. Mancini was never the same.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

ok, naive question -- can't they extend the track? looks like plenty of room on the northeast end, although maybe they don't own that land?

That's the top end of the dragstrip — those white objects at top right of the track are three-story-tall buildings with media, sponsor, track and sanctioning body facilities. The buildings form an archway which the cars roll under into the staging area. I suspect you're right to assume that property to the northeast belongs to somebody else. Given that the cars roll into the staging area under those buildings, nothing less than a total reconstruction project would be needed to re-do that end of the track.

If you look down at the other end in Google Maps (drag the map down to see the bottom end of the track), there's a long asphalt runoff area (necessary) but a short gravel pit with a grassy stretch behind it; after that there's a concrete barricade/fence combo and some trees at its end. There's a public road called Pension Road behind the pit. The asphalt runoff area is longer than the 1/4-mile track itself, probably close to half a mile, but that's not enough room for an out-of-control 300mph vehicle to slow down. The gravel pit is way too short, from what I'm looking at.

 

[lono]

Scott Kalitta makes the second driver in two years to die in NHRA. Include John Force's crash that almost killed him last year and that's three pretty brutal crashes.
In any other sport, NASCAR and boxing included, two deaths in two years would bring calls for banning the sport. Too dangerous. Too barbaric. Who wants to see people die while competing?
I haven't seen the same kind of outrage after two drag racers are killed. Is it because it's kind of expected in drag racing that something terribly wrong could happen in any race? Or is it that people really don't care about drag racers?

I grew up a fanatic drag racing fan. Loved it since I was 4 or 5 years old.

But clearly, this ought to be a wake-up call. Not just two dead, but the sport's biggest star ever nearly killed to boot.

What I don't understand is why they don't simply slow the cars down. Not one fan in 100 could tell the difference between 330 mph and 275 or maybe even 250 mph.

I interviewed Force a couple of weeks ago and he said he was never going to retire. He had this very fatalistic, drive-it-'till-it-kills-me attitude. Frankly, it was creepy.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Kalitta's not the biggest drag racer ever.

That's Prudhomme, Garlits, Force or Bernstein.

But I daresay most people never heard of Scott Kalitta until Saturday.