#Drag racr blow up at start plus

I reached out to Eddie last week for his remembrances, and he was kind enough to share them with me. He had no idea how prophetic those words were as in the midst of his third qualifying run in Houston, all heck broke loose again. “I'm still sore and I'm sure it will get worse before it gets better.” “I would like to say running Houston will be fun, but I think I'll wait till after the first round of qualifying before I can say anything,” he said at the time. Hill lost the round (Tony Schumacher went on to win his first Top Fuel title in its wake) but, not wanting to disappoint their fiercely loyal Texas fans, the team quickly prepared its backup car for the Houston event. At the O’Reilly Fallnationals the weekend previous at Texas Motorplex, against Doug Herbert in round one, something went amiss in the #7 cylinder and led to a huge explosion that broke the top left framerail and bent the right side and dented the rollcage and left him with a bruised lower back and right shoulder. The incident, which occurred during his third qualifying run at the Matco Tools SuperNationals at Royal Purple Raceway in Houston was his second cataclysmic explosion in as many events. They’re the all-time hall of famers when it comes to leaving the sport cold turkey. 30,1999, not only had Eddie not driven a Top Fuel car again but neither he nor Ercie has been to a dragstrip since.

(You can read all about him here.)Īnyway, remember how I was saying that fans of the last decade and a half never got to know him? (I mean, how could you forget because it was just around 150 words ago.) The reason is that from the date of this incident, Oct. They broke records on land and water like records were going out of style, and Eddie was voted to the impressive 14th spot on the 2000 Top 50 Racers of NHRA’s first 50 years. They weren’t immune to pressure like anyone else, but sometimes their genial coolness under fire – Eddie had walked away from some tremendous wrecks, both in drag cars and drag boats, always seemingly emerging flashing a big smile and a thumbs up - made them seem like they were from another planet and their performances sometimes were out of this world.

#Drag racr blow up at start plus

Unless it’s through vintage video, NHRA fans of the last decade and a half never got to know the Hill clan –- spectacularly-friendly Eddie, charming and supportive wife Ercie, good-natured right-hand man “Fuzzy” Carter and wife Jana, plus Hot Dog the dachshund and 'Monkey Bat” the cat –- nor how astoundingly popular they were. At least in the Top Fuel class where he was a world champ, event winner, and record setter. Titled 'Y2Ka-Boom,' it’s important more than just for the artistry or to show what can go wrong with a nitro engine – it also depicts The Last Ride of Eddie Hill. Turns out that it’s not a photo at all, but an amazing piece of artwork by one of the sport’s most renowned artists, Kenny Youngblood (yes, ‘Blood did it). It looked vaguely familiar and as a reformed “crash shooter” myself I thought I would have remembered it who’d captured the incident so well, but couldn’t. He’d seen the image on one of the Facebook groups he belongs to and wanted to know what I knew. It started innocently enough, with an email from longtime Insider reader/contributor Andy Perreault (“the railroad guy up near Pacific Raceways,” as he always unnecessarily reminds me), asking me if I could tell the story behind the photo at right, which shows fan favorite Eddie Hill’s Pennzoil “Nuclear Banana” going, well, nuclear and blowing an engine to smithereens.