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In this business, debris can be deadly. Whether it’s a chunk of detritus kicked up by the wheels of a passing semi truck or actual pieces of the road surface being thrown at you by mother nature, encountering a flying object at highway speeds is something a decent driver wouldn’t wish on his or her worst enemy. Now, imagine what it’s like to experience something like that while flying down the lanes at more than 200 MPH.
That’s precisely what happened to “Snot Rocket,” a (Gotta Have It?) Green Mustang drag car, during the middle of a run at Bradenton Motorsports Park’s drag strip this past weekend. Just a couple hundred feet short of the traps, Snot Rocket’s left rear quarter simply exploded, and the culprit appears to be a tool (a ratchet handle or breaker bar, perhaps) that was left under the hood of the car during pre-run prep.
The clip below begins with Snot Rocket and its opponent, a silver C5 Corvette, lined up to make their passes, and the incident takes place just seconds later. The Mustang is partially out of frame at approximately 1:24 when a chrome bar appears to drop from its engine bay and skitter along the pavement underneath the car, before being thrown into the wheel well by the left rear tire, at which point the entire quarter of the car disintegrates, taking the wheel, body work and door latch with it.
FL2K Stick shift shocker and huge destruction!! Let’s hope everyone is okay!
The most impressive thing about this entire mess is that the driver, Brett LaSala. managed to keep the car out of the wall until he’d bled off most of its speed, limiting the damage to the left-rear corner and front bumper. More good news: The crash came late in the weekend, after LaSala set a Stick Shift record with a 6.458-second pass at 233.44 mph.
The chrome handle is just visible after dropping from the car’s engine bay and before being thrown into the body work by the left-rear tire. (YouTube screenshots)
LaSala’s quick thinking also saved him from any harm; he got out of the car on his own immediately after the incident. Team co-owner Doug Cook confirmed in a Facebook post that the tool was the likely culprit, but declined to speculate as to who may have left it there.
“That’s a loser mentality to focus on that. We are a team,” Cook said.
The craziest part? The car still trapped over 212 miles per hour with LaSala sawing at the wheel to keep it in the lane. The team has about a month to get Snot Rocket back on the road in time for the World Cup Finals at Maryland International Raceway, and it sounds like they have every intention of doing so. You love to see it.
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Byron is an editor at The Drive with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.
