Sad day in NHRA

bigsilly · Jun 22, 2008

Not sure how many of you all saw this but Scott Kalitta was in a fatal accident yesterday. Ironically he died at the same track he began his career at. He was 46 years old and his dad is the famous Connie Kalitta. It is tragic, second funny car driver in the past few years. Eric Medlin, one of John Force's drivers died in 2007.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DziJdGwFQjU

InDaShop · Jun 22, 2008

oh man, i always liked that guy.

that explosion prolly knocked him out, and the wall finished the job. damn.

But you know he went doing what he loved, and what more can you ask?

blacksheep10 · Jun 22, 2008

InDaShop said:
oh man, i always liked that guy.

that explosion prolly knocked him out, and the wall finished the job. damn.

But you know he went doing what he loved, and what more can you ask?

100%. damn I don't wanna die in a nursing home.

blacksheep10 · Jun 22, 2008

holy ****!!! that wall hit was brutal

Cole · Jun 22, 2008

That was rough. I wasn't expecting the Wall hit at all. My question is why is the run out at the end not longer? It seems really short.

bigsilly · Jun 22, 2008

Cole said:
That was rough. I wasn't expecting the Wall hit at all. My question is why is the run out at the end not longer? It seems really short.

I have watched a lot of the coverage about it and that is something most of the drivers have commented on. Jim Head was saying that most of the old tracks like this one have not been updated since the 50 or 60's and they were only running in the low 200mph range then, now they are running 320+mph. I would look for some changes to come from this. One other thing, notice his parachute did not deploy, so he hit at over 300 mph.

vanguard · Jun 22, 2008

bigsilly said:
One other thing, notice his parachute did not deploy, so he hit at over 300 mph.

I've seen that before. If the car explodes into a fireball those parachutes aren't as reliable as they need to be. Having said that, it looked like a pretty good explosion. I'm not sure but that might have killed him before he hit the wall. At the very least, like InDaShop said, he was knocked out instantly and hit the wall (died) in his sleep. I doubt it was a painful death.

P · Jun 22, 2008

Im real confident that man died feeling nothing but adrenaline, no fear, just passion and doing what he loved.

It sucks, but thats the way to go

s10me · Jun 22, 2008

when its time to go might as well go out in a ball of fire, doing what you love to do. Hopefully Connie and Doug keep doing what they love.

P · Jun 22, 2008

Kalita's have an air freight business.... Seen thier planes at BHM several times.

( has nothing to do with this , but I thought it was interesting when I learned that ... .kinda never pictured it. )

bigsilly · Jun 22, 2008

P said:
Kalita's have an air freight business.... Seen thier planes at BHM several times.

( has nothing to do with this , but I thought it was interesting when I learned that ... .kinda never pictured it. )

Yep, they started that business in 2000. They ship large pieces of freight all around the world. At one time Scott's sponsor was Kalitta Air. That is Connie's "day" job. They have a pretty large fleet of planes now.