ENNIS, Texas — An eerie hush blanketed the Texas Motorplex and a pall clouded the National Hot Rod Ass’n’s Countdown to the Championship at Sunday’s O’Reilly Fall Nationals, as Funny Car icon John Force suffered multiple injuries in a horrific high-speed, top-end collision with fellow veteran Kenny Bernstein.
The second-round incident left Bernstein shaken but unhurt. Force was airlifted to Baylor University Medical Center in nearby Dallas with a broken left ankle and severe abrasion on his right knee.
Force was alert and responsive throughout the ordeal at the track and the hospital.
Sunday night, Force underwent surgery to repair his broken left ankle and his dislocated left wrist. He also sustained severe abrasions and slight fractures on several fingers on his right hand.
CAT scans showed no further damage. Surgeons also cleaned Force’s other wounds, including the large abrasion on his right knee.
Immediately following the accident, NHRA’s Dr. Dwight Shewchuk called Force’s injuries “significant” and “serious” and said they “will require extensive work-up and treatment.” But he allayed fears by saying, “Nothing appears life-threatening at this time.” He said Force “demonstrated some evidence of a concussion” at the scene.

John Force (NHRA Photo)

Bernstein said he “had a little bit of a headache when I first stopped, and that was because of the bouncing of the head back and forth against the roll cage.
“It was a pretty violent this-way-and-that-way when we got together out there,” he said, wagging his head from side to side. He said the John Force Racing-inspired safety improvements in recent months, most notably added roll-cage padding, are the reasons his head did not take a more serious pounding.
Bernstein, already struggling on the run to keep his Dodge from veering toward the center line, described how he and Force “wadded up together for a second or so there.”
He said he was convinced that something broke on Force’s Castrol Ford Mustang, causing it to slam into his Monster Energy Drink Dodge Charger and trigger an explosion of carbon-fiber body parts and shrapnel.
It thrust Force into the wall in Bernstein’s lane and broke the Mustang in two. The front-half piece, carrying the engine, shot down the track and into the sand pit that’s designed to halt runaway cars when parachutes fail.
“I guarantee you something happened,” he said. “John Force isn’t going to run over somebody. I would say something happened on that race car.”
Confusion marked his reaction to being clipped in the left front section of his car. “All I could see was nothing, because there were bodies coming apart, coming up in front of you and taking your eyesight away,” Bernstein said.
He said he remembered driving through a shower of body parts from both cars.
“Then when I came out of that — you’ve got to realize that just took milliseconds — I saw John’s car going toward the wall. It hit the wall really, really hard. I was a little out of control at that time, so I was trying to steer it as straight as I possibly could.”
Then, he said as he stopped, he saw the front half of Force’s car pass him to the right side.
“I looked at that and tried to figure out what I was seeing because I couldn’t see John,” Bernstein said. “I was trying to get to him. I was letting my car roll to get up there to see if I could help him. But he wasn’t even there. That’s why I ended up way down the track. I thought he was still in that car. I saw the commotion back up the other way and realized that [what he was watching] was just the front half of the car.”
Bernstein said he didn’t think he had crossed the centerline. “I never had a thought that I was in his lane” — and said he did not hit the wall when Force’s car collected him up. He said he initially “saw him coming my way — I saw the front of his car pointed towards me,” estimating it was at about a 45-degree angle. He said crew chief Jimmy Walsh told him later that his own rear tire clipped the timing cone.
He said once he “got it all figured out,” he got a ride to where Force was being loaded onto a stretcher and spoke with him there, reassuring him he was all right.
Said Funny Car winner Tony Pedregon, who drove for the 14-time champion for eight seasons, “I was watching Force’s race on the monitor, and… I have to admit it really shook me up. It took me back to when I was a kid and my dad told me about these wrecks where cars got cut in half.
“I ran over there to try and help, and there was no cockpit,” he said. “It really scared me. I just wanted to hear that he was OK. Broken bones will mend. I wanted to hear he was talking and if he was swearing, even better.”