TOPEKA, Kan. — Robert Hight was cool at the center of the inferno.
The National Hot Rod Ass’n Funny Car class’s top qualifier at the O’Reilly Summer Nationals gave everyone a scare in Sunday’s second round after he beat Scott Kalitta across the finish line by one-hundredth of a second. His Auto Club of Southern California Ford Mustang suffered an explosion and turned into a fireball in the left lane.
The car skated across the track in front of Kalitta, banged the wall hard and shot back across the track, slamming into the left wall. Hight flipped up the escape hatch and rode on top of the car until it traveled into the sand pit at the end of the racing surface. Then, uninjured, he jumped from the car and ran to safety.
Hight acted quickly and intelligently. Fire will demand that a man do that.
But while Hight was cool, boss and father-in-law John Force and crew chief Jimmy Prock were hot, angry about a rule forbidding chassis replacement during eliminations.
They also cocked a collective eyebrow that no official from the sanctioning body inspected Hight’s car in the interest of safety while the crew was working feverishly to try to make repairs before the semifinals.
The John Force Racing organization is on a crusade for safety perfection in drag racing in the aftermath of Eric Medlen’s fatal crash during testing in March. Nearly every day, Force is discovering new issues he wants the racing community to address, new questions he thinks he — or at least someone — should have posed. And Hight’s incident exposed yet another possibility for disaster, something else for Force and his elite brain trust to tackle.
Earlier in the week, Force focused on helmets. Frustrated that, in his words, “They’re like socks — one size fits all,” he said that concept isn’t good enough for the 14-time champion and his team.
“Winning and safety are my priorities,” Force said. And while some might joke from time to time that the popular and personable Force needs to have his head examined, that’s just what he is going to do.
He said he, daughter Ashley Force  and Hight are planning to go to a company in Los Angeles as early as this week to “get our heads scanned,” he said, as a first step in getting custom-fitted helmets.
John Medlen, Eric Medlen’s father and crew chief, has been involved heavily in the decision-making process regarding safety changes for the team. “He got so excited yesterday about the technology of the helmet to save Ashley and other kids,” Force said about Medlen.
Force was quick to say that the current helmet situation might not be wrong for other teams or wrong in general. He simply said it was not adequate for his team. Furthermore, noting that helmets for Formula One drivers can cost as much as $22,000 apiece, he was cautious about calling for immediate and widespread changes.
John Force always has been known for talking, and . . . OK, sometimes embellishing the story to make it more intriguing or certainly more hilarious. But his talk these days is with true purpose, and that is to save lives.
Sadly, when Darrell Russell’s deadly Top Fuel accident claimed a bright, promising and popular driver, the drag-racing community circled the wagons, had a couple of pow-wows and quietly got back to the business of pursuing quick elapsed-time slips.
 John Force wants a winning e.t. slip, too. And heaven knows he needs them, mired in 17th place in the standings when only eight get to vie for the newly formatted championship. But his legacy now is preserving the future Eric Medlens and Darrell Russells and not being afraid to speak up on behalf of drivers like himself, who honestly don’t know what questions to ask to ensure their own safety.
And that is what truly is cool.