Scary Moments in Your Racing Career?

[Angela Macy]

Back a long time ago (ha ha) when I was 17/18 years old a friend of mine, Neal Church, who raced at Farmington at the time, verbally told me how to make a pass in his car. He asked if I wanted to try it, and I jumped right in. Back then I was a little more fearless than I am now. The car was like a 71-73 Chevy Camaro and ran 6.60's in the 1/8th.

I did a really pathetic burnout, then staged and launched - cut a .550 light which is a .050 light now, which wasn't too bad for a first timer (I had made passes in my Blazer though). As soon as I launched everything went grey. Which kind of freaked me out as the car was Silver and my first thought was I had flipped the car over I quickly realized the full faced helmet had moved up when I launched (as it was a little too big for me) and the mouth guard was blocking my view. I reached up, pulled the helmet down and then noticed that I didn't have my foot completely to the floor, still had an inch or so to go, so I floored it and went like 6.80 or 6.90 at 101 mph. But yeah, I never took my foot off the throttle, despite being blinded for a few seconds. It's really pretty stupid looking back on it - I didn't even think about the helmet being a little loose. I hadn't even drove anything with that kind of torque/horsepower to realize what force I'd be hit with when I floored it.

Scott tries to constantly get me to make a pass in the Volare or Coronet, but I won't do it. I'm scared now in my old age I have raced our 68 Dart before though, althought not very well.

[442OLDS]

One of my most scariest moments was after a qualifying run this year at the IHRA national event in Milan.I had just made a qualifying pass,and everything was perfectly normal.As I made the turnoff at the end of the track,this guy was frantically jumping up and down and told me to stop.If you are in a race car and somebody is jumping up and down like crazy,you assume the worst.I'm thinking that maybe there is a fire or something.I stopped the car,starting unbucking the belts as fast as possible,and this guy opens my door and screams that the tower called and said that they couldn't tell if my number was 3447 or 5447.In IHRA.I run 5447 and 3447 in NHRA.I wish I could just run the same number in both sanctioning bodies,but the moral of the story is to never start screaming and jumping up and down at somebody in a race car UNLESS THERE IS A TRUE EMERGENCY!

[Tim Kish]

I used to bracket race FWD turbo cars, one night in particular I was trying to back into someone in the lights riding the brakes pretty hard while still on the throttle (once you lift with a turbo car you can't get back in it). Right before the stripe I decided to dump it hard and lifted off the throttle. Trick was the car had power brakes, which while you are making boost have no vacuum and are really hard - BUT as soon as you lift there is a whole lotta vacuum and the brake pedal literally sucked to the floor since I was pushing it hard already. Managed not to hit anything but got a little "consultation" about excessive braking.