By the volume of e-mails I’ve been receiving over the course of the last 24 hours, I know there are a ton of you waiting for me to write this. I expected that, and it comes with the territory, so despite the fact I’m so tired I think I could’ve (quite literally) slept all day, here we go... Okay, I couldn’t have slept ALL day, because at 4:00 Barbara and I will be sitting in Section 105 (pretty much dead centerfield) at the Metrodome, watching the Twins and Tigers play their one-game “Tie Breaker” along with about 50,000 other baseball fans. Considering the whole planet seemed to be watching the Packers and Vikings playing in the same stadium last night, the old dank Humpty Dome will be the center of the sporting world’s attention for a couple of days.
Anyway, heading quickly back to the end of the Memphis race...
Rain, of course, on Sunday. What was really miserable was that a third-grader with a rudimentary knowledge of colors could have told you, after a quick glance at radar, that there was no way we could run. All day. Period. But, for reasons that have escaped me since my first days in this sport, we got the unmitigated pleasure of being allowed to sit out there for most of the day, before they made it official... I think my feet finally warmed up sometime in the middle of the night, after being wet and cold all day.
We went to bed as fast as we could, knowing they’d made the intelligent decision (which we all wholeheartedly supported) to start the race at 10:00 on Monday. As long as there were no printed tickets or schedules that said 11:00, why not start an hour early if you can. So, we were rolling out of the hotel by 6:30 or so, but not before hitting that alarm and then looking outside to see the entire world still very wet. My wipers were on the whole way to the track.
We had torn down about half of our hospitality area on Sunday, leaving the poles and the big awning in place, along with half the floor, but putting nearly everything else away. Annette was kind enough to give me a small work space by leaving one of the rectangular tables out, which my computer and printer could share with the snack tray and the coffee pot. Just for the record, the snacks were for everyone, and I only had a couple of packs of peanut butter crackers. I did my share of damage to the coffee, though.
Throughout those early morning hours, we just went about our business as if this thing was going to happen on time, but there was no escaping the fact the air was 100 percent saturated. There were no tell-tale signs of rain on any windshield or in the puddles, but all you had to do was ride around on a golf cart to scooter and you got wet. It wasn’t looking too good, but they kept at it out on the track, running the jets and doing the best they could to get it dry.
Daniel and Ron Capps were the first pair of Funny Cars, and we had actually gone through various scenarios about how we were going to get his car serviced after he beat Ron in that opener. I think everyone thought the car was quick enough to do that, and we all knew Daniel would be fine at the Tree and just great getting it to the other end. His mostly volunteer crew, however, were going to have a hard time turning that car around in an hour.
We had hoped that he and Capps, being the 8th and 9th qualifiers, would get the last pair as their only choice, but someone else took it and they were saddled with being first. Had they been last, the idea was for the loser of the race between Tim and Bob Tasca to put their car in Daniel’s pit, and have Daniel’s team roll straight into theirs, and that team would pitch in and get the between-rounds service done. That was cool of the Tasca guys to offer, and our guys were up for it too, but when Daniel and Ron had to be the first pair, it kind of blew that chance. They’d be the first ones back to our gaggle of three pit areas, and probably wouldn’t know who had won between Bob and Tim.
We waited out a bit more mist, then finally Miss Tennessee sang the national anthem and we were off. Top Fuel was FAST, so we knew the track was every bit as good as we’d expected on a cool (almost cold) overcast day. Finally, Daniel and Ron pulled up to run, and we all got ready.
After his burnout, I took my position directly behind the car and brought the video camera to my right eye. The kid is so calm in the car, there was no way of knowing it was Daniel in there and not Tim.. They both staged together, and at the flash of amber the kid was away, and I mean “away in a hurry.” He actually left on Ron by two-hundredths, and his LRS Shelby was absolutely ripping.
It’s funny how, after a few years in this gig, you can get an almost instant sense for how good the car is running by how it leaves. Sometimes, if it’s under-powered, we say it just kind of “wallows” on the tires and slugs along, not really getting “up on the tires” with good pop. If it shakes, that’s easy to see, and if it smokes the tires, well that’s sort of an instant indication that you messed up (the same kid who could see green on a radar screen could spot tire smoke and know it’s bad).
Daniel’s car got right up on the tires and was tearing away. The whole thing only lasted a couple of seconds, but I could tell he was ahead, and I knew it was a good lap. And then… His car turned left.
I’ll try to explain this exactly as I saw it. His car was running strong, but it made a little “sashay” move out there a bit, and I can clearly remember thinking “This kid is good, and he’s going to keep his foot down and keep it in the groove” right before it made a complete and ridiculous turn to the left. That little rear-end sashay probably saved us more than you realize, because if the car had simply turned left without it, Daniel would’ve run right into the side of Ron’s car. The little wiggle slowed him enough for Capps to get by and, just barely, out of the way.
Unfortunately, when something that cataclysmic goes wrong on a lap, I have a tendency to immediately hit the “Off” button on the camera. Throughout all those years of big explosions and bodies flying 30 feet in the air during the CSK days, I barely got any of that on tape because I instinctively turn the thing off when bad things happen. This time, I got the car turning left, and we could see one of the wheels bouncing straight ahead, down the track, before the screen goes black. I did not capture the impact with the wall, and for that I’m sort of thankful.
Obviously, we’ve all seen it multiple times by now, on TV, and we can see that both wheels are off the car before it hits the wall. To be clear, because there was a little confusion about this, it’s not the tires that came off. It’s both complete wheel assemblies. The tires stayed attached to the wheels just fine.
The collision was, obviously, gruesome. We were all stunned for that first second or two, because they had taken down the big screen on Sunday and we had no replay to see, and with all the smoke and debris, we really couldn’t see where Daniel was with the car, whether he was upright or upside down, or what was going on. In a blink, though, his guys were already yelling “He’s okay, he’s talking to us,” and that lifted the weight of a universe full of worlds off all of our shoulders. By then, we could hear Bob Frey say “He’s getting out of the car under his own power and it looks like he’s fine...” It seemed inconceivable.
Just then (and keep in mind, everything I’ve just written since the part about the burnout took place in about 10 seconds), Sheila Cunningham yelled “Bob, go tell Krista,” and I turned to see Daniel’s mom walking, slowly, sort of aimlessly, up the track toward the scene, which was much too far away to walk to. I ran for her, put my arm around her, looked her right in the eye, and told her that he was okay. He was actually, amazingly, just fine. She was strong, but at that point I’m not ashamed to say we both needed the arms around us. I stayed with Krista from that point on, as we kept hearing reports that he was not just okay but perfectly great down there and really sad about ruining the race car.
Tim got out of his car, got on a scooter, and headed down there to see Dan, and not too long after that they both came rolling back on the return road, and Daniel literally leaped up onto the retaining wall to hug his mom.
If there are people out there who say stupid things about how hard we work on the safety features in these cars, and how much we’ve done since we lost Eric and Scott (I know, you think I’m kidding when I say that, but I’ve gotten e-mails from idiots who write “This is ridiculous, they know it’s dangerous, just get in the car and go. I’d do it!”) Daniel Wilkerson is now your walking, talking, LIVING example of how far we’ve come. I don’t want to think what I might be writing about here, had we not had all those new features on the car. As he said “The only thing that hurts are my feelings. I ruined a great race car.”
He, of course, did not ruin the race car. When both of your rear wheels come off at that rate of speed, you are simply an unfortunate passenger, along for the ride. With a bit of a laugh, he recalled every split second of it like this...
“It was ripping, and then maybe for just a fraction of second I got the feeling that something might be wrong, because it did that little sashay move on me. Then, next thing I know I feel like my butt hit the track, and I’m going straight left. I cranked the wheel hard right and actually thought, ‘I got this,’ but the wall was right in front of me and then I’m thinking, ‘I don’t got this,’ so I just held the wheel as hard as I could, gritted my teeth, and got ready for it. Let me tell you, that split second right before you hit the wall pretty much head-on, that’s not a lot of fun. Then, for some reason I hit the brake and the fire bottles at the same time, which was dumb on two counts. One, I didn’t have any rear wheels, much less brakes, and I don’t know why I hit the bottles. That just added to the mess I made.”
1
Officially "wadded up"
The clean up, out at the scene, was a pretty long drawn-out deal, and Daniel felt bad about that as well. I took him up to the announcer’s room and put him on the P.A. with Bob Frey, and an apology to the fans and racers (which was, of course, totally needless) was one of the first sentences out of his mouth.
When Bob asked him if the wreck was a big hit on his wallet, Dan said “Not at all, for me. It was for my dad, though.”
The car was officially “wadded up” about as badly as any car I’ve ever seen. Basically, everything forward of the motor was smashed right back to the fuel pump, and it was hard to even make sense out of what you were looking at. The body was destroyed, too, but it mostly just looked like someone sawed the whole front third off it, because the rest of it was in pretty good shape.
By the way, that body was loaned to us by Bob Tasca so that Daniel could drive a Ford at this race. I guess we should take the pieces back over there and say “Here it is. Thanks a lot for letting us use it...”
As for the all-important question “Why did the wheels come off?” I don’t have that answer for you yet, and I refuse to speculate. In due time, when the team has the opportunity to go through it all, very carefully, I suspect we’ll find an answer. Until then, Daniel Wilkerson is still the same bright, funny, dedicated kid he was on Monday morning, and that’s all that counts.
Anyway, that’s about all I feel like writing today. So much to do, including that important ball game this afternoon, before I head for Richmond on Thursday.
I’ll be back in a day or two...
Wilber, out!