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Very sad news... my beloved '73 Plymouth Duster is dead. A complete moron crashed into me on the drag strip Wednesday night, 8/7/19 at Sonoma Raceway. I walked away, somehow, but she is totaled. I am extremely lucky and was wearing a helmet.
The guy who crashed us was a newbie and an fool to boot; he had no business being on a racetrack. His was a bought-not-built supercharged 2016 Coyote Mustang. He didn't know the rules of the track including especially HOW to exit the drag strip, didn't understand that, being in the left lane, he had to yield to me in the right lane (return exits are on right).
After we passed the finish line he continued to accelerate while I began to coast (he was ahead of me by maybe 50 feet). Dude didn't even know where the end of the track was!
Then he suddenly braked hard and veered right, directly into my path, trying to take the earlier of the two exits - which is obviously totally crazy when you are coming off a run of well over 100 mph. I slammed the brakes and yanked the wheel to the right trying to avoid the collision, skidded for about 40 feet while rotating sideways, and then we collided. His car was totaled too... but that bastard had a billion airbags in his car.
It was a really really hard day and I'm not gonna be over it any time soon. I'd built this car pretty much from scratch with a lot of help from a lot of friends, including so many helpful tips, tricks, and answers from FABO, over nearly five years. What started out as a forgotten, neglected grocery-getter left to rot in a field for 10 years slowly metamorphosized into a real race car, full of guts and power and so much fun to drive both on the track and on the street. We even won the Wednesday Night Drags together, beating out everyone else in our class. And everything I now know about fixing and restoring these magnificent cars I had to learn first on the Duster... usually the hard way.
In fact, after an intense session of dyno-tuning that very morning (!!!) helped increase horsepower and torque (+25 hp, +21 ft-lbs), she finally hit the 12s on the 1/4 mile... my very first run, in the 85* afternoon Sonoma heat, with a headwind, yielded 12.89" - not only blowing my old record of 13.13" out of the water but finally helping me to achieve my one and only goal of getting into the 12s. In fact, I had long ago decided that if she ever got into the 12s, we would retire her from drag racing and swap out the automatic transmission for a 4-speed. So close.
I have no doubt that if we had more runs, she would have gotten even faster as the day cooled off - typically I drop about 0.15"-0.20" after the sun goes down. The crash happened on the second run.
So I went from the highest of highs, so proud of what my little car had accomplished, to the lowest of lows, waiting with her bent-up body for a tow truck to take us home one last time.
Of course my heart is broken but I fully recognize how much worse it could have been.
Now I've called a few lawyers who refuse to take my case - the waiver we sign at the gate to get in to the track is pretty specific about eliminating the possibility of suing another driver, even in clear
cases of negligence. My insurance will not cover race track damage. I don't know what to do. I have well over $25k in this car, even though she doesn't look it from the outside.
Has anyone had any experience with race track crashes and making things right afterward?
