Dave Connolly had his warning sign, or thought it could have been the one of the cars in the other three lanes during the second round of Top Fuel eliminations at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals. 

“The burnout felt fine but I thought I heard the engine misfire a time or two like it could have been a rocker arm or ignition,” Connolly said. “At this point, we don’t have radios in the car and I started pointing to myself asking if that was us. The crew guys sent me in.

“When you have four guys, and in the back of my mind, it was race day and I was hoping it was someone else other than me that I heard. Obviously, that wasn’t the case. I should have never hit the gas. Hindsight is 20/20.”

Connolly in the first round destroyed the clutch in the C&J Energy dragster but pulled out his first career Top Fuel round win. However, in this instance, there was no way Connolly could have known the incident would be a mini-version of Doug Herbert’s catastrophic 1999 NHRA Finals engine failure. 

“Everything happens so quick … you hear the big bang and your head flies forward. At that point, you can draw the conclusion that something catastrophic has happened. You just get over to the right to minimize the oildown time. It’s unfortunate. I don’t have any answers about what happened.”

Antron Brown, three lanes over from Connolly, felt Connolly’s engine explosion.

“I felt the concussion and I believe it moved my car over,” said Brown. “At first I thought it was me. But then I realized it wasn’t. It was as if my car was picked up and moved over. That’s only something you’re going to feel in the Four-Wide. That was a big bang and I’m glad he was all right.”

Adding insult to injury, Connolly could only look up and see the winning elapsed times of 5.81 and 6.01.

“It hurts when you look up at the scoreboards and see the ETs which got by that round and know that we had a car that could have made the finals,” said Connolly. “These things are animals when you are pumping that much fuel and ignition into them. They are finicky to any ignition or fuel problem. Today was what you get when the least little thing goes wrong.”

Top Fuel rookie Connolly, who has already experienced more than his share of misfortunes this season, asked team owner Bob Vandergriff Jr. if these were part of the learning process.

“Being new to the class I asked Bob if these were common occurrences, and he said, ‘no, not really. All of this stupid stuff seems to be happening to you.'”

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