JOHN MEDLEN: ANSWERS ARE NEEDED
It was answers which saved John Force's life following his horrific crash at the Texas Motorplex, two years ago. It was answers that saved Bob Tasca's life Saturday afternoon at the NHRA Carolina's Nationals, just one week ago. Answers to why Eric Medlen died while testing his Funny Car at Gainesville.
There needs to be answers - the right answers, according to John Medlen, crew chief on Mike Neff's Drive One Ford Funny Car and father of the late Eric Medlen. Equally important to Medlen is how much time passes before an informed conclusion is reached. Lives could be depending on it.
According to one man, answers are needed.
It was answers which saved John Force's life following his horrific crash at the Texas Motorplex, two years ago. It was answers that saved Bob Tasca's life Saturday afternoon at the NHRA Carolina's Nationals, just one week ago. Answers to why Eric Medlen died while testing his Funny Car at Gainesville.
There needs to be answers - the right answers, according to John Medlen, crew chief on Mike Neff's Drive One Ford Funny Car and father of the late Eric Medlen. Equally important to Medlen is how much time passes before an informed conclusion is reached. Lives could be depending on it.
“It's as critical as every beat of your heart,” Medlen said, emphasizing every word, when asked how critical it was to find out what happened with Tasca's wheel. “It's critical because, every time you step on the gas the potential for an occurrence is there. You're playing the numbers. What are the odds? It's one hundred percent if it happens to you.”
Medlen said he wants the answers to what occurred before and after Tasca's wheel broke. He wants all the answers, not just the ones pertaining to the wheel breakage itself.
“The bottom line says that if you're going to single out that wheel as a fault, that's a mistake,” said Medlen. “Something else contributed to it. We've never seen a failure like that and that's the argument. We've never seen a failure like that and that's right, we haven't. The cars are heavier. That racetrack was good enough in traction that we were accelerating a 2600 - pound car at the same velocity we use to accelerate a 2500, 2550, 2530 - pound car. The tire is heavier. The (shoulder) is stiffer. There is more input into the bead bundle than there ever has been before. If we had a failure like that I think we have to get right after the fact that was not potentially an isolated failure.
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“To single out the rim as being the problem is a huge mistake.” 
Medlen has spent the better part of his life following his son's tragic death looking for answers so that others don't have to die needlessly. After looking at Tasca's broken wheel, Medlen had the Force operation tear down all their tires and wheels and look for possible defects. They didn't find any. However just because nothing was found doesn't make Medlen feel better.
“If you would say, 'How are we going to tell if the wheels on the car now are okay?' I don't know what to tell you because there is nothing that would show its face or be obvious. That's the part that concerns me, to fix what can't be seen.”
Medlen said he is hoping NHRA, SFI and others don't look at the problem as a one off occurrence. There are enough similarities between his son's wreck, Force's wreck and now Tasca's wreck to ignore.
“We have to go back a little bit in time. Eric's tire failure and the results of that tire failure produced X results in terms of the chassis and what happened. Consensus was - isolated incident. Six months later, John Force had an almost identical occurrence. The outcome was nearly identical. How do you escape that? No one knows. Divine Intervention. Now, two years have gone by. Different set of, we'll say, occurrences, but nearly the same. If that bead bundle, or bead ring, would have come off at half track or the finish line – catastrophic.
“I don't think we can overlook the fact there is still a looming potential problem that exists that we need to look at real carefully.”
For all his concerns, Medlen holds out hope that at some point Tasca's wreck will be fully understood and actions taking to prevent such a failure in the future.
“I think they will in time. I think it will be an investigative discovery process because nobody really knows the exact numbers. We know the torque involved. We know the clamp arrangement and the forces involved there. But, we don't know what in and out fluctuations the bead has as the tire goes down the racetrack. When you step on the gas the sidewall of the tire is trying to extrude the beads outward. However, when you get down the racetrack, and now the sidewalls are as narrow as the rim is, there is a real good chance it's trying to pull it in. Then you get this washboard or waffling effect to that welded interval. My opinion is, the stiffness of the sidewall has changed the input into the bead. I would be investigating that aspect and the fact that the general
mass of the tire is heavier and its evolved heavier over a period of time.
“If we've seen this one time, I think we would be foolish to convince ourselves it would never happen again.”
You can be certain Bob Tasca, who already goes above and beyond when it comes to safety, won't forget or relent until this incident is better understood. And, by his very actions he isn't forgetting the lessons learned from the loss of Eric Medlen.
“The only people that can make any difference are those that are here that are left that choose to address the issues and not say '
Oh well, it won't happen to me',” counseled Medlen. “The only thing that can come from that is that somebody will take the ball and say, 'These people gave their lives. I'm going to make it count for something so that nobody else has to go through that pain.' People like Bobby, who go the extra distance, to put the safety features on that aren't required very well may save people's lives.
“Unfortunately, 80 percent of the people, unless you mandate it, won't go that same distance.”
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