BRUCE LITTON'S COURAGEOUS RETURN
He's looking ahead but stopped to talk about his recent past.
Top Fuel driver Bruce Litton
miraculously is on the mend following his accident during a semifinal run
against Bobby Lagana Sept. 10 at Epping, New Hampshire. He even has a new Lucas
Oil Dragster safely in the field for this weekend's race.
He's looking ahead but stopped to
talk about his recent past.
"I don't remember any of it." He
said of the crash. "I remember talking with Bobby before we got into the car. I
remember doing the burnout and staging the car. I seem to remember I had to
pedal the car right off the bat. That's the end of it."
Litton said he told his crew
chief, Mike Wolfarth, that he thought he had pedaled it a couple of
times.
"Ten," came Wolfarth's
correction.
"Ten times -- that's a lot,"
Litton said. "I was trying too hard. It just destroyed the car."
But the new Brad Hadman-built dragster, which Litton called "a nice piece," carried him to the tentative No.5 position with a 4.727-second pass at 289.63 mph during Friday qualifying and later a 4.657.
It was clear Litton, who sat out two races and the only two
he has missed since 1992, was eager to get back into competition. However, he
said he came to Rockingham with a game plan that definitely included
caution.
"I'm going to use good judgment,"
he said before climbing into his Lucas Oil Dragster. "I wanted to come back
before the end of the year. I just want to get a run under my belt. I want to
shake the car down."
Litton is racing while mending
from a concussion, broken nose, cracked elbow, torn-up shoulder, and skin
grafts. He said his shoulder "went though the seat and the side panel of the
car, and I actually dragged it along the guard wall. It took a lot of meat out
of the corner of my shoulder."
He said the most painful time
during his recovery was when the bandage stuck to the skin-graft wound on his
leg. "I stuck a towel in my mouth and screamed like a girl," he said, recalling
the time wife Carol helped him remove it.
Litton said he appreciated the cards, e-mails, prayers, letters, and support he received following the accident. "That means more than winning a race," he said.
SUBMIT FEEDBACK