Team officials for Gotham City Racing confirmed the Funny Car driven by Melanie Troxel suffered a non-catastrophic chassis failure during the NHRA Time Trials in Phoenix, Arizona. The chassis, driven by Mike Ashley in the latter part of 2007 and updated to the 2008 SFI chassis spec, cracked underneath the seat after tire shake was experienced on a Friday run.

The 2008 SFI spec allows for the use of normalized or heat-treated tubing. This car utilized a chassis fabricated from heat-treated tubing with normalized tubing welded into the section that failed.

Team officials for Gotham City Racing confirmed the Funny Car driven by Melanie Troxel suffered a non-catastrophic chassis failure during the NHRA Time Trials in Phoenix, Arizona. The chassis, driven by Mike Ashley in the latter part of 2007 and updated to the 2008 SFI chassis spec, cracked underneath the seat after tire shake was experienced on a Friday run.

The 2008 SFI spec allows for the use of normalized or heat-treated tubing. This car utilized a chassis fabricated from heat-treated tubing with normalized tubing welded into the section that failed.

“The K-member underneath the driver’s seat failed,” confirmed Brian Corradi, crew chief on Troxel's ride. “Fortunately, we noticed the car was broken before we sent her down the track again. There was a lot of tire shake there and the track was tight. Just glad we had the opportunity to catch this during a test session. Catching it in Pomona would have been tough and too late.”

Corradi confirmed the car had experienced some ignition problems and hadn’t made full runs during the day. The severe tire shake ended the day for this car.”

Troxel will drive the back up car in Pomona while a yet unannounced driver will pilot a new prototype chassis fabricated by Chuck Hase. This car will be a heavy frame-rail chassis assembled with normalized tubing.

UPDATED: Corradi confirmed that the K-member was normalized tubing that was welded into the heat-treated Funny Car car chassis. This area takes a lot of the load from the rear-end anti rotation bracket. This is the same area that failed in Robert Hight's car. The car that Troxel was driving was the previous generation with the added lower X and upper K additions but the round crossmember and smaller tubes in the K.