It’s the crash that everyone’s been talking about, and just a couple of days after this horrific accident, the video footage is beginning to make the rounds on the interweb. This incident is one that we – like most fans of drag racing – never thought we’d witness: a doorslammer performing a Top Fuel dragster impression with an acrobatic finish line blow-over crash. And certainly no one expected a car that tips the scales at over 3,000 pounds to be the source of such a crash.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83ZNMWMH8qI
Dennis Bailey was competing in his turbocharged 2004 Mustang at this weekend’s ORTC Radial Revolution at South Georgia Motorsports Park in Cecil, Georgia in the Outlaw Radial vs 29 x 10.5 category, where in his second round matchup alongside Carlton Thompson’s 2003 Mustang – things went terribly wrong. Bailey’s Mustang powered into a wheelstand on the backhalf of the eighth mile track – something not that uncommon for these high horsepower behemoths. However, after whacking the throttle once to get the nose back on the ground and getting back into it for one last valiant attempt to cross the stripe before Thompson, the nose of the car reached skyward almost instantaneously. You can see the point – and audibly hear from the fans reactions – at which the air underneath the car takes over and thats all she wrote.
With Bailey literally along for the ride, the Mustang points due north and then lays over on its side, slamming down atop the guardrail with the left side of the car with its momentum carrying it over the wall where it hooked into the dirt and barrel-rolled, shedding parts and pieces high into the sky. Bailey was initially unconscious following the impact, but walked away and later sought treatment for pain in his shoulder. He has since been released without injury; a true testament to the craftsmanship of chassis builder Skinny Kid Race Cars.
Bailey’s car has a knack for towering top end wheelstands, as evidenced by a recent video we featured here on DRAGZINE from Hub City Dragway, where only the presence of a set of wheelie bars kept it from being the catastrophic crash that was to come.