Tony Pontieri feels like he’s stared Death in the face, and he didn’t like what he saw.

“I can remember every second of it,” Pontieri says of the fiery, top-end crash he went through June 25, while qualifying for the NHRA Pro Mod event in Norwalk, Ohio.

“I remember seeing that grey concrete wall coming up and thinking, ‘So this is what it looks like to die.’ It was a weird feeling and let me know that all those guys who’ve died before doing this knew what was coming up and it’s something I hope I never have to feel again.”

Tony Pontieri feels like he’s stared Death in the face, and he didn’t like what he saw.

“I can remember every second of it,” Pontieri says of the fiery, top-end crash he went through June 25, while qualifying for the NHRA Pro Mod event in Norwalk, Ohio.

“I remember seeing that grey concrete wall coming up and thinking, ‘So this is what it looks like to die.’ It was a weird feeling and let me know that all those guys who’ve died before doing this knew what was coming up and it’s something I hope I never have to feel again.”

As the first one down the track in round two of qualifying, Pontieri was on a solid pass in the left lane with his Rob Sporring-owned ’69 Camaro when it lost grip shortly before the finish line and turned hard right into the far guardwall, still posting a 6.06 at 181.18 mph that was good enough for sixth place at the time. Upon impact the car was engulfed in a huge, orange fireball as it nearly exited the confines of the walls before falling back down on its driver side and grinding to a halt well down the staging lanes.

Pontieri recalls NHRA Safety Safari members arriving quickly and helping him out of the wreck, praising their caring and professional efforts, as well as those of everyone at the local hospital where he was checked out and released, too.

He’s still dealing with some lingering neck pain and undergoing acupuncture treatments every other day, however.

“I’m actually feeling really good now, but don’t want to push it and come back before I’m totally ready,” he says. “I don’t want to do any irreparable damage by coming back too soon. I want to make sure I’m 100 percent before I get in a car again.”

The McAmis-built Camaro was a total write-off, but did its job in protecting him from serious injury, Pontieri says. Car owner Sporring is currently hunting for his driver’s next ride, but Pontieri says, “I told him, ‘It’s got to be a McAmis car or I’m not driving it.’”   

Remarkably, Pontieri says the accident represents the first time in a 26-year driving career that he’s crossed the center line out of control, but that it happened about the thousand-foot mark seems no coincidence to him.

“It was a traction issue. Nothing broke on the car and it shouldn’t have happened at that point on the track,” the auto shop owner from Bolton, Ontario, states. “There was a chattering feeling right before it turned, but if you’re going to shake the tires in these cars it’s going to happen near the start, not that far down when it’s in high gear and stuck to the track. It should not have lost traction at that point.”

That three more drivers suffered similar fates that weekend, including Roger Burgess in the same Pro Mod session, suggests to Pontieri that his crash may have something to do with the same complaints the Pro Stock contingent has been airing lately about the NHRA spraying traction compound only for the first thousand feet.

“Our cars are similar to Pro Stock, but with about 15-hundred horsepower more,” Pontieri points out. “So if they’re having issues, then we’re going to have issues.”

The NHRA argument goes that spraying the extra 320 feet to the quarter-mile can damage the tires of nitro cars now racing to only 1,000 feet as the dynamics of decelerating on a treated surface can pull chunks of rubber off the tires, but with limited aerodynamic downforce, the Pro Stock and Pro Mod groups insist to be safe they need the track sprayed all the way to their still-1,320-feet finish line.

And though he emphasizes a desire to remain racing the traditional quarter-mile distance, Pontieri supports either every class racing to a thousand feet or laying down the glue for the full distance of 1,320 feet.

“What’s more important,” he asks. “Their tires or our lives?”