RON KRISHER REBOUNDS
Nobody would blame NHRA Pro Stock veteran Ron Krisher if he decided to skip this weekend's Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals in Reading, Pa. while he recovered from injuries sustained in a horrific crash during eliminations at the 52nd Mac Tools U.S. Nationals near Indianapolis two weeks ago.
Nobody would blame NHRA Pro Stock veteran Ron
Krisher if he decided to skip this weekend's Toyo Tires NHRA Nationals in
Reading, Pa. while he recovered from injuries sustained in a horrific crash
during eliminations at the 52nd Mac Tools U.S. Nationals near Indianapolis two
weeks ago.
But Krisher, who suffered some minor burns and a few cracked
ribs when he barrell-rolled his Valvoline Chevy Cobalt, is a racer. And when in
doubt, racers race.
Which is exactly what Krisher will be doing when the
POWERade Series 23-race tour resumes with this weekend's event at Maple Grove
Raceway.
"We're going to haul the car to Reading and drop the clutch and
see what she does," Krisher said via telephone from his home in Warren, Ohio.
"It's kind of amazing. I'm going to be sore, and I'm not going to be 100
percent, but it doesn't do me any good to sit home.
"I'd rather race than
sit home. Actually, I'm bored."
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But two weeks ago, the feeling was quite different for
Krisher, who was enjoying a pretty good weekend at the biggest drag race of the
year. He qualified No. 12 before opening eliminations with a victory over No. 5
Mike Edwards in the first round.
His second-round pairing against Vieri
Gaines also looked good from the start. He got off the starting line on time,
had inched ahead by half-track and appeared to be making another solid
6.7-second pass that might put him in the semifinals. Then his world literally
turned upside down just past the 1,000-foot mark.
"We were making a
pretty good run up until 1,000 feet," Krisher recalled. "At 1,000 feet, the
motor just went straight up and that was the end of it."
At that point,
Krisher's Cobalt got very loose, moved left and right before making a hard left
turn just past the finish line. The car then rolled over twice before scraping
the left retaining wall. The fuel system broke as a result of the crash, causing
the car to burst into flames before stopping.
This was Krisher's second
major crash in the past year. He also rolled his Pro Stock car at Seattle in
August, 2005. He credited this latest accident due to excessive fluid on the
track.
"It was oil on the race track," Krisher said. "If you look on the
tape, you can see the tire start to paddle when it got into whatever the (heck)
was left on the race track. You're car doesn't go through the middle of high
gear and go crazy (like that). We didn't break anything, we didn't blow up a
motor, we never lost any fluid.
"It had nothing to do with my race car. We didn't break an
axle...nothing happened (to it), but the thing just went crazy when we got to a
certain point on the race track."
There seems to be some truth to
Krisher's claim.
There was one major cleanup during the fuel session of
the second round. That occurred after the final Top Fuel match-up between
eventual winner Tony Schumacher and David Grubnic, who's motor erupted into a
fireball just past half-track, resulting in a cleanup by the NHRA Safety Safari
that took nearly an hour.
There were no incidents in the Funny Car
session. But the first pair of Pro Stock resulted in Krisher's crash.
"They had a major blowup (during the final pair of Top Fuel),"
said Krisher, who was ran in the same lane as Grubnic. "They took about 45
minutes working on it, and it possibly put oil in both lanes. And they just
missed something.
"A Funny Car can drive through small patches of that
stuff, because it has about a 7,000-pounds of downforce and we have about
200.
"When we hit something, our cars will break loose. (Fuel
cars) are traveling so fast that they are not going to have the problems that we
would in Pro Stock."Krisher was initially unconscious just after the
crash, but regained consciousness and got out of the car with assistance. He was
transported to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and later released. He
suffered minor burns on his left elbow and forearm, bruises on his left leg and
some cracked ribs.
But still it could have been worse. One report
indicated that if it wasn't for the HANS device that most Powerade Series
competitors use during competition, Krisher's crash could have resulted in a
fatality.
"The HANS device took care of everything," he said. "My neck
wasn't sore. It was a tremendous asset.
"That was a heck of a wreck and
you're traveling at a lot of speed. I just feel very fortunate."
Krisher
hasn't lost his desire to want to go back to the race track, which he will do
this weekend.
But it's also been a rush to get him a competitive car ready to race.
The team recently received a new chassis and finished preparing the car this
week.
"I'm not going to be 100 percent," Krisher said. "But I can drive.
We finished up the car (Wednesday). I really would like to take it out and make
some test runs, but we didn't get a chance to do that, what with the weather the
way it is here, so we'll just haul it to Reading and see what we can do. I
really don't like doing it that way, but I don't' have a choice."
But he
has a choice on whether or not to get back in the game, and he's chosen the
latter.
"Nothing will stop that," said Krisher referring to his desire to
continue to let the clutch out.
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