We’ll start off this piece by saying that the driver, Shannon Butler, is recovering from the injuries sustained in this crash at the Great Lakes Dragway’s Chicago King Of The Streets race put on Saturday, June 14th. Those injuries include a couple of cracked vertebrae in her lower back along with a number of bumps and bruises, but she will be fine. The car, however, is reported to be a total loss.

The KOTS race is an event designed to bring together the baddest of the bad in the Chitown area – and we all know the Second City is a hotbed of drag racing action. Many of the country’s quickest racers hail from the metropolis, and that means on race day at KOTS there’s all sorts of craziness.

Shannon’s Mustang runs a small-block Ford engine pumped up by an F-2 ProCharger that is easily capable of enough steam to propel her into the seven-second zone.

The KOTS rules are simple — a 28×10.5-wide tire and no wheelie bars in a door car. On the starting line, once both cars are staged, the green is the only light that comes on — there is no warning, just go time.

Perhaps the most insane part of the KOTS race is that there’s no track prep whatsoever — a racer can have a crewmember drop some VHT in front of the tires before the burnout, but that’s it. The rules state that there is no prep after the starting line, just like a real street race. The large groups of spectators lining the walls also help to add to the street racing atmosphere; although we wouldn’t choose that vantage point for obvious reasons, the huge crowds show that this type of racing is in demand.

Unfortunately, just like a real street race, high-horsepower cars don’t always fare well when track prep is not there. We’re sorry to see Shannon wreck this beautiful car, but we’re happy to know that she’s going to recover from her injuries.

Insanity in Chitown. 

Thanks to 1320Video for the footage.