Video of Biondo's win over Fletcher's close call

[Jeff Stout]

Originally Posted by Wade Mahaffey

As one who builds his entire car other the mandatory factory portion, I am not in favor of an additional risk to my investment. I have been guilty of excessive braking myself, but that is unfortunately a component of the game we play. Now if it were against the rules, and enforced to the letter....I think that would be a good thing. I love the competition of racing an except the risk involved. I am retired and If I were to get hurt because somebody pushed a little to hard on the brake pedal, I would still get paid....but what about the poor bastard that can't work anymore because someone was over aggressive! What about his family, his house, his livelihood! What about the racer that can't afford a new car....or can't find a ride deal like Peter, Dan, Anthony etc, etc. All because someone got caught up in the moment. Now I understand that the good "finish line racers" may disagree, because this is a card in their hand, but an intentional act that could upset the car at high speed if slightly over done should be removed from the sport. It's funny if you think about....every racer goes on the brakes softly after a run....they do that because it's the safe way to finish the run, and minimizes the risk of upsetting the race car. Let's face it...drag race cars are not designed for maximum braking effectiveness, so why would you take the chance of over braking at over 100 MPH in a vehicle that has no design incorporated to provide a more positive outcome when hard braking. I'm sure that the Fletcher incident has been discussed within the camp, and corrections have been made as well as a review of the equipment, to eliminate further incidents. Hopefully others will use this incident as a wake up call so we all can race and have fun, while bending the bar back toward safety a little bit.

Wade Mahaffey

Great job writing^^^^

Working as race director at Speedworld we had our team races and during them there were a lot of tire smoking top end going on. I brought this up with the team captains and they felt something should be done. So we started one time in a year is a warning, second time your out of the race. Didn't have much teeth because everyone now would do it once and usually when a driver smoked tires the second time then he usually lost , so getting tossed for the day didn't really mean a whole lot.
Now we had two instances of tire smoking and one hit the wall and tore his own car up and messed the wall and timing equipment up. We had some down time and when looking at the car his helmet actually hit the windshield. Had a 5 point harness on and when asked he chose to have belts loose enough to be able to turn around in his seat to be able to see the other racer coming. This time he turned to look and slightly turned the wheel and jammed the brakes. He was tossed for the day and asked to not return for the remainder of the year. The second incident was a fast car smoked the tires and won. Went to pits to let them know they were out for the day. He asked to look at his car as the left caliper was froze ( same side as smoke) and wheel barely turned, I let the driver know if he can swamp caliper out for another and prove to me the car was safe as far as braking I would reinstate him. He did swap it out, showed me the old one, showed me the brake fluid. Everything looked legit and I let him back in.
Not all tires make smoke so its hard to catch, but if they do make smoke or change lanes then it is unsafe stripe driving to others. I don't care what you do to yourself but I cant sit back and have drivers race recklessly and put others in danger for something that can be avoided and really unnecessary. Was this a mistake or bad judgment ? Sure it was. Others have written its a video to learn from. Can you tell me what you learned? I learned that its ok to slide through the lights and put others in danger with out any penalty.
Flame away

[HandOverFist]

Can't tell you how many videos I have seen of the "big names" driving with the belts loose enough to fall out of...