Top qualifier Robert Hight experienced a nasty fire following his second round victory over Scott Kalitta.

The subsequent fire resulted in collisions with both retaining walls before coming to a stop in the sand. Hight said a loss of traction down track led to the fiasco.

 “It started spinning,” Hight said. “That is a routine deal when it is hot. The things can spin. They have a rev limiter on them and it never did rev real high so I stayed with it. If you pedal it down track like that you lose so much fuel it bangs the blower so I stayed with it and kept driving it and it wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t even revving up that high. The rev limiter was holding it and it blew up. It dropped a cylinder and it lifted that head and then it relit in that cylinder and it blew the head off of it.”

That’s when things got ugly in a hurry.

ESPN2/Motel6 Vision

Top qualifier Robert Hight experienced a nasty fire following his second round victory over Scott Kalitta.

The subsequent fire resulted in collisions with both retaining walls before coming to a stop in the sand. Hight said a loss of traction down track led to the fiasco.

 “It started spinning,” Hight said. “That is a routine deal when it is hot. The things can spin. They have a rev limiter on them and it never did rev real high so I stayed with it. If you pedal it down track like that you lose so much fuel it bangs the blower so I stayed with it and kept driving it and it wasn’t dangerous. It wasn’t even revving up that high. The rev limiter was holding it and it blew up. It dropped a cylinder and it lifted that head and then it relit in that cylinder and it blew the head off of it.”

That’s when things got ugly in a hurry.

“I couldn’t see a thing,” Hight said. “It was the biggest fire inferno I had ever seen. The first thing is to get the chutes out and get on the brake. I hit the fire bottles a couple of times and the next thing I know I hit the right wall. I couldn’t see a thing. That (hitting the wall) surprised me. I thought I kept it pretty straight. The next thing I did was I whipped the wheel over and then I felt it hit again so I figured that was the sand.

“I thought I was in the sand and good to go so I bail out of the roof hatch and this thing is still rolling. What I had done was I hit the left wall. I wasn’t about to go back down in this thing when it is burning. So I sat on the roof and used my foot to hit the brake and I just barely nosed it over into the sand. I am really proud of my team to get this car back up here.”

Hight’s natural instincts as a driver took over which left no time for panic.

“You do the stuff that you have been trained to do and that you have thought about,” Hight said. “You just want to get the car stopped. I honestly thought the thing was stopped but what happened was the brakes weren’t working. It had burned a brake line. I was very surprised when I got on the roof and it was still trucking down there.”

“You don’t want to bail off and get tangled up or have it run over you. You also don’t want to be sitting on top if it goes into the sand really fast because it could flip over on top of you. I was just trying to get it stopped with my foot.”

Hight’s crash thrashed to rebuild the charred car, but the decision was made to only start the tweaked chassis and not race it. They didn’t even feel safe doing a burnout. As a result, Hight’s Mustang fired and idled in the water box as Head did his burnout.

JFR had a spare chassis but NHRA rules prohibit a raceday chassis substitution.

“Once we saw the extent of the damage we did not plan on leaving the starting line,” Hight said. “We wanted to get it back up here and you never know what could happen. If you at least stage the car you have a chance of winning another round and that is what we planned to do all along.”

Hight said the labor of his team was an inspiration.

“They are the best,” Hight said. “We had it started and there was a little leak. I couldn’t see it from where I was at but they did a great job and I am very proud of them. It is really cool to be on this team because nobody ever gives up, ever.”

The Heartland Park – Topeka spectators offered a round of applause for the wearied team and the car was shut down. Hight heard them.

“It sent chills up my spine,” Hight said.