Flames adorned the nose and front fenders of Ken Singleton’s funny car. 

On March 25, halfway through the car’s second run down the Texas Motorplex track, actual flames engulfed the vehicle.

The inferno changed forever the life of Singleton, the only champion of the Funny Car Chaos series in its first three seasons. The 55-year-old native of Chickasha, Oklahoma, may never race again due to the amputation of two-thirds of all eight of his fingers, and because of that loss, it’s uncertain whether he will ever again be able to pursue his trade as a welder.

Burned over 26% of his body, Singleton is recovering thanks to multiple surgeries, skin grafts, and, yes, even the amputations. He’s made the transition from Parkland Memorial Hospital’s burn center in Dallas, Texas, to a hospital in Oklahoma, and finally, at home.

On Wednesday, some 2½  months after the fire, Singleton gave his first interview about the fire, and embedded in that, his past, his present and his future – a future that includes drag racing, though not as a funny car competitor.

THOMAS POPE: Everything about that pass looked fine, then everything went off the rails. What happened?

KEN SINGLETON: The best thing we can kind of figure out – the chain of events, I’m not sure – is that at the top of first gear, it was time to shift it, and it blew the burst panel. When it blew the burst panel on the motor, I remember there was fire at my feet and I thought, ‘Well, that’s weird.’ I mean, ‘Why is there this fire?’ I went to shutting it off, pulled the chutes, shut the engine off, and I thought I did the fire bottles, but I did not. In a matter of seconds, it just became an inferno, and how it did that, nobody really knows. Nobody knows why it caught on fire like it did and it just went nuts.

And then I’m just trying to get out of it, y’know? I remember sitting up in the hatch and the air hitting me and I was like, ‘This thing’s still rolling pretty good.’ I reached down and hit the brake lever with my right hand and it slid sideways. I don’t know how fast it was going, but when it happened, it was going 200.

TP: So you were part of the way out of the car and reached back in to hit the brake again?

KS: Yeah. There was fire everywhere. It burned the shield off my helmet. Then I just decided, ‘You’re gonna die if you don’t get out of this thing,’ so I rolled up on top of the body, and it had caved in from the heat. I just kept rolling, and I ended up rolling off the back of the car — and when I rolled off the back of the car it was probably still going 20-30 miles an hour. I didn’t break nothing, hitting the ground. I remember standing up and there wasn’t anybody there. (Jo Singleton, Ken’s wife and a Registered Nurse: “They were there, they could not see you because they were with the car, and you were behind the car in all the smoke.”) The thermal heat, I thought I was still on fire. They finally did hit me with water, but I was just sitting there cooking.

TP: Have you ever had a fire anything like that?

KS:  I don’t think there’s been an alcohol (funny car) fire in history like that.

That’s the one thing you never think about. I never thought about a fire, you always think you’re going to hit the wall or something like that. in an alcohol car, I never dreamed of fire. And then I’ll back up and tell you why the fire got so intense: Somewhere in there, it broke a fuel line, and that fuel line’s just spraying fuel inside that body, and that’s kind of what made it go nuts.

It was a bad night, dude. I thank the Lord. I’ve said this a hundred times and I mean it: I probably should be dead. If I’d have been in that car another five seconds, I don’t believe I’d be alive.

 

 

 

TP: What happened immediately after you got out of the car until they got you to the hospital?

KS: I’ll be honest, I lost a little bit somewhere in there ’cause I remember standing there and trying to figure out why they weren’t helping me. I’m sure I was smoking and whatever else. And I’m not dogging those guys, I just don’t think they were prepared, because I know the guy that was standing by me, he didn’t have no firesuit on or nothing; he couldn’t do nothing. Whether he was a paramedic or whatever, I don’t really know.
The safety people, I’m not dogging anybody. For one, all them guys guys are kind of a volunteer deal, it’s not like the NHRA Safety Safari. They were doing what they thought they could do. So, no hard feelings with anybody, and I don’t want to portray that.

Then I do remember getting hit with water on my back. The next thing I remember was I was in the ambulance, waiting on the medi-flight deal, and they’re wanting to intubate me. I was freaking. I yelled at my wife, who’s an RN, I said, ‘Do I need to do this?’ And she said, ‘Yeah, you need to do that.’ I was just scared they were going to knock me out, and I honestly thought I wasn’t going to wake up. She said, ‘If your throat’s burned, they need to do it now or your throat’s going to swell up and they won’t be able to.’

I remember her and my daughter, Morgan, were there when I was in the ambulance. The next thing I remember is waking up at Parkland a day and a half later. I was intubated until that Sunday; I’m guessing around noon, somewhere in there. I woke up and still had that frickin’ breathing machine down my throat. They woke me up and I couldn’t talk, my hands were all bandaged up, and here I am burned up. I kinda freaked out then. There wasn’t hardly nobody there with me, there wasn’t nobody in the room. (Jo Singleton: “I was there, you just don’t remember. I never left the room.”) Then they took the tube out. That thing’s huge, it’s hard to believe it goes down your throat. Then after that we’ve started this journey of trying to get well. (Jo: “They grafted his knees, back and hands.)

When I woke up I was blind, I couldn’t see. My eyesight’s come back, which is a blessing. Not seeing sucks.  

TP: Were you in pain, or had the burns gotten deep enough to kill the nerves and you didn’t feel anything?

KS: I remember looking at my hands. I remember asking my wife, ‘Do I have a nose?’ I think she said I did; she lied. (Jo Singleton: “You did have a nose.”) It just burned the end of it off. For, like, two weeks my nose was black, that's kind of scary. Actually, everybody that sees me talks about how good I did.

I definitely don’t look like I did, but I don’t look like a freak show. I’ve been way happy with it. It’s healing. That’s the one thing about burns that drives me insane, is it’s a slow process. Everything I’ve ever done my whole life, it’s ‘let’s get it done, let’s get it done.’ This burn thing, you’re at its mercy. My legs are all pretty much healed. My back is, what, Jo, 95%? (Jo Singleton: “At least 95%.”) It’s almost healed. My back was burned pretty bad. Climbing out of the hatch, I had a two-piece fire suit, which I would recommend never to do. When I came out of the hatch, it’s like it hung my pants and separated (them from his jacket), and just cooked my back, and the front of my stomach a little bit; my back, mostly. Now the NHRA’s made it mandatory they’ve got to be one-piece fire suits, which I would agree. I had a two-piece because I was real bad about when we got back to the pits to work on the car, I’d  just take my coat off and leave my pants on. But I wouldn’t do that now.

TP: You’ve always been an ‘alcohol car’ against the nitromethane cars, since Funny Car Chaos is built on both racing each other heads-up. On such a high-traction track such as the Motorplex, did you add nitromethane to try to keep up? Or were you using straight alcohol for fuel?

KS: No, we were running M5.

 

 

 

TP: What’s M5?

KS: It’s got a little bit of nitro in it. I’ve run it for three years. Y’know, in Chaos, there’s no rules, so you can run whatever.

I’ll be honest, we had it turned up. We were wanting to be in the top half of the field. The pass before, it had run a 3.60 (seconds) at 218 (miles per hour) on a pretty soft tune-up. We were pretty excited that maybe we could get it down in the low fifties. Even on that run, blowing up at the top of first gear and all the fire, it still ran a .71. That’s crazy – that it ran that good blowing up and all the crap, it still ran a .71. 

TP: How deep into the run were you? It was hard to tell from watching the streaming feed.

KS: I know where it shifts – it shifts just before half-track — and it was ready to shift. I don’t know that we ever shifted it, but I know it was right there ’cause I remember the sound of the motor. We shift it like at 10-2 (10,200 rpm), and there’s a certain sound when it gets there and it was there. I just remember, boom!, and it popped — and usually that’s it.

Everybody thought it was the transmission. Brandon (Pesz of PJS Racing) – he was helping me that night, helping me tune it – he took that all apart and he’s like, ‘Dude, that transmission’s perfect. The only thing we can find is that broke fuel line.’ Now I’m wondering if that’s what happened, if maybe (the fuel line) was rubbing on the body. It was a brand-new car, and maybe the body was rubbing on it and … I don’t know. I haven’t seen my car yet, but it’ll be here tomorrow (June 9).

If it broke a fuel line, that would make sense why it pushed a head gasket out. It pushed the No. 8 head gasket, which is what blew the burst panel. The fire at my feet, see, that had to have been fuel. Why else would there have been fire down there? It was just like immediately the whole thing just caught on fire. It was crazy. 

TP: Does it really blow your mind that this happened? You have a championship car and team, you’re not some ‘leaker’ who’s prone to explosions and fires.

KS: We spent all winter building that car, and we didn’t spare no expense. It had been inspected. It’s just crazy. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s just a weird deal. I hope that some of the rule changes they’ve come out with will help in the safety part. (Note: On May 27, Funny Car Chaos announced rules amendments that, between Sept. 2, 2022, and March 1, 2023, mandate the use of: fire-retardant glove underliners; fire socks; a one-piece firesuit and head sock; and an SFI-specific fire-retardant body undercoating paint.)

TP: How up-to-date was your safety gear?

KS: My firesuit was only a year old. I had a Taylor. The only thing I hadn’t done — and this is my fault; I’ll own up to this — the NHRA says you’ve got to coat the inside of them bodies with this fireproof paint. Well, I had ordered it and we never had got it, and I just thought, ‘Aw, it’ll be fine, we’ll just coat it when we get home.’ NHRA said the paint would’ve given me, like, two more seconds. That’s what the NHRA safety people said.

They looked at the car for a frickin’ week. They confiscated it. Really, I didn’t care. I mean, I was sitting in the burn unit in Dallas, and the last thing I cared about was that frickin’ car. I had (Texas Motorplex owner and retired Funny Car racer) Billy Meyer call me and say, ‘Can we keep your car for a week? We think we might be able to figure out a way to maybe not have this happen again.’ I was like, ‘Absolutely. Whatever you guys want to do, I don’t care.’ So they did, and we finally got it back.

TP: After you left the hospital in Dallas, what happened?

KS: One thing that was crazy, at Parkland, they had never fixed my face. My face was still burned from the wreck. Part of my nose was gone, my face was burned. The doctor in Oklahoma City (Dr. William Necktow, a severe burns specialist), he just said, ‘Why didn’t they fix your face?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know why they didn’t fix my face.’ He’s like, ‘You’re on the docket to get into surgery now. we’re going to fix your face.’ And the next day they fixed my face, which honestly looks really good. He did a good job. I think in another year you won’t hardly know I was burned.

TP: When were your fingers amputated?

KS: That was in Dallas. For three weeks … what was the magic word, Jo? (Jo Singleton: “They needed the burns to declare.” Ken Singleton: “I don’t know exactly what that means.” Jo: “It means exactly how bad it’s going to be.”)

Sitting in the hospital it got worse. More burns kept showing up. Even thermal burns – from fire not actually touching your skin, but oil and sweat from the inside of your firesuit – that’s pretty common. My hands were open-fire burns. Every day, they’d come in and try to find a pulse and different things in my fingers. I told my wife, ‘If we’re gonna sit down here for months trying to save these fingers and they’re not saveable, that don’t make sense to me. If they can’t find a pulse, that means they’re dead, right?’ And she kinda agreed. She’s like, ’Yeah, really.’ I just told them, ‘If you’ve got to take them … I don’t want it, but I also know I want to get well.’ I’m sure we signed a consent form to do that, but one day I woke up, and I didn’t have no fingers.

I will tell you that having no fingers sucks. You can’t do crap. Right now my wife pretty much takes care of me. Now we’re in occupational therapy three times a week. There are prosthetics we can do, and I’m looking forward to that. I think we can get life back to a new normal. I won’t ever drive a car again, but I’d like to crew-chief cars. (Jo Singleton: “There’s nothing wrong with his brain between his ears, let me tell you.”) There’s a lot of things I can still do, it probably just ain’t driving a funny car. 

 

 

 

TP: How is your daughter handling this? 

KS: She’s getting better. She hasn’t handled it well. She was my media girl, promotions girl. We had just signed that deal with Maxima Oil, and honestly we had things headed our way this year, and this has honestly just been a train wreck.

It’s drove her to do her own business. She’s doing media, I think, for five racers now, which I’m proud of. She still has trouble that I can’t drive. She still thinks I should be able to go drive a funny car. I was like, ‘Morgan, there’s more things to life than driving a funny car.’ I won five national championships in boats, I won three Chaos championships, I’m 55 years old. I hold the track record at Amarillo, at Kearney, the mile-per-hour record at Mo-Kan. It’s not like we weren’t successful. Not that I’m not missing it, because I am, but there was a point we needed to quit anyway, this just wasn’t the way I wanted to do it.

CP: Have you been watching any drag racing, or is that something you’ve been avoiding?

KS: We’ve been watching the Chaos stuff on the (streaming) deal. Eddyville, I’m going to tune Shane Lawson’s car in July. We’re not going to be out of drag racing, we’re just going to take a different role. (Jo Singleton: “And we’ve got my dragster.”) My wife’s got a dragster, we’re gonna run that. That thing always took a backseat because the funny car came first, and we’d run hers when we could. I think if I got any kind of prosthetics on my fingers, I don’t know why I couldn’t drive a Super Comp car. I definitely could see that happening down the road, doing a little bit of bracket racing.

TP: What about your occupation? Do your injuries affect that?

KS: I’m a welder, which, that’s going to be hard to do now. I was a pipeline welder. We welded for Oklahoma Natural Gas. My company, but I was the only employee. We’ve got to come up with a new gig.

Being able to weld, that’s my goal because I enjoyed it. I got a job from a guy that’s rebuilding cars, kind of a body shop/custom shop deal. He hired me, and I’m going to start the first of the month, I hope. It’s up to me. My stamina just ain’t there, but I’m hoping that by then I could work three days a week. He wants me to help manage that shop.

TP: I saw that you attended an air show in Chickasha (Wings & Wheels Fly-In & Car Show) over the weekend. What was it like to get out of the house and just “feel normal” again?

KS: It was fun, seeing people. It just amazes me how much support we’ve had from fans and people in general. Going to the air show, you got to see a lot of those people. One of my major sponsors and a real good friend of mine, Brad Bates, he’s got a Nova and it won best of show.

TP: So you’ll be back at the track next month, at Eddyville?

KS: Planning on it.