Four days after Bert Jackson’s fatal crash, team owner Enoch Love has more questions than answers.

Love has experienced four days of emotional pain following Jackson’s accident during the ADRL Dragstock VIII event at Rockingham Dragway. He’s on a mission to find out what happened to the driver he considered to be more of a son than someone who drove his racecar.

Right now all he has to go on is his memory from standing on the starting line. Richmond County officials still haven't released a cause of death in the accident.

“I think what Bert experienced was as freak of an accident as a person could have,” said Love. “The car didn’t barrel roll or anything like may have been reported somewhere.

Four days after Bert Jackson’s fatal crash, team owner Enoch Love has more questions than answers.

Love has experienced four days of emotional pain following Jackson’s accident during the ADRL Dragstock VIII event at Rockingham Dragway. He’s on a mission to find out what happened to the driver he considered to be more of a son than someone who drove his racecar.

Right now all he has to go on is his memory from standing on the starting line. Richmond County officials still haven't released a cause of death in the accident.

“I think what Bert experienced was as freak of an accident as a person could have,” said Love. “The car didn’t barrel roll or anything like may have been reported somewhere.

“Bert was on a heck of a run and it was likely going to be a career best. He was a good driver, the kind you could trust to finesse a car back into the groove. But this time, a slick dug in, and he was along for the ride. The car just darted into the wall and he couldn’t stop it.”

Love replays the horrific incident over and over in his mind. The hardest part of witnessing the accident, for him, was in explaining what happened to Jackson’s widow – Vaness.

“I asked her if she really wanted to know,” Love said. “I think by that time, she was ready to hear.”

Love said he carefully crafted his words to explain what he witnessed.

As he remembered, Jackson drifted out of the groove in the Pontiac GTO and by the time he began to correct, the car made an abrupt turn into the wall, striking at what he estimates was a 2 o’clock position. The collision caused the throttle to hang up. The stuck throttle and a broken a-arm sent the car traveling down the race track, bouncing on and off the wall all the whole way down.

Jackson was traveling quickly enough at the impact that his car still ran 4.15 seconds across the eighth-mile finish line.

Video of the accident shows the damaged car came to a stop shy of parked medical personnel. Then the engine idled down and the car slowed to a stop. Inexplicably, the engine throttled back up, the car spun the tires and took off again. The car came to a stop in the woods to the right of the final turn-off.

Love only shares these heart-wrenching details because he’s fully convinced his driver was incapacitated following the initial hit of the guardwall.

“We have to know what happened here,” Love said. “Bert was a good enough driver, that if he hung the throttle, he would have pushed in the clutch. He would have thrown the parachutes. When that didn’t happen, I knew he wasn’t in control.”

According to safety personnel on the scene, Jackson’s parachutes didn’t deploy until they were ripped from the the car as it went into the woods.

Love said medical personnel conveyed to him that they believed Jackson was unconscious during the incident and not in control of the car. At this time, no one can determine whether impact to Jackson’s helmet happened as a result of the initial accident or was caused when the car went into the woods.

Love is adamant Jackson was not only wearing a head and neck restraint device but every available piece of safety equipment designed for a Pro Stock car. Head and neck restraint systems are mandatory safety equipment in ADRL competition.

Otherwise, as Love points out, “Bert meant too much to me to let him race without every safety device available. He meant the world to me.”

Love also accepts the possibility Jackson could have suffered a neck injury despite the plethora of safety prevention employed at the time.

“We need to find out if there’s a vulnerable area in our safety equipment we couldn’t have prepared for,” Love said. “Bert’s accident, somewhere down the road is going to save someone’s life. And when it does, I want that driver to look at Heaven and thank first God and then Bert.”

Sources indicate the ADRL has already begun steps to prevent a similar situation from happening again. Reportedly the ADRL plans to test the Electrimotion system, a safety feature designed to automatically shut off the engine and fuel system, if a driver becomes incapacitated during an accident.

The system will not only shut off the car but also deploy the parachutes.

The ADRL has declined to comment on the situation yet confirmed an ongoing joint investigation with the sanctioning body and the Richmond County police department, which has jurisdiction over the accident scene.

Love believes Jackson’s death has inspired his fellow racers to evaluate how they race. The immediate impact, he believes, is a more safety conscious ADRL Extreme Pro Stock class.

“They are thinking, looking and evaluating,” said Love. “How can we be safer out here? I can tell you, God forbid, if this happened to another driver and not Bert, he’d pull our team together and we’d have gone over this car with a fine-tooth comb, double checking everything, safety wise. He’d want to know how we could make this car safer.

“He loved his family too much not to do that.”