If something precious breaks into a million pieces, a person usually proceeds extremely slowly and cautiously to gather the jagged fragments.
But when their hearts shattered, John Medlen, John Force and Doug Herbert acted quickly and decisively.
The ACDelco Gatornationals brought the John Force Racing Funny Car team back to the very quarter-mile strip of asphalt where last March 19, National Hot Rod Ass’n rising star Eric Medlen suffered injuries in a violently freakish testing crash that proved fatal.
As John Force Racing publicist Dave Densmore put it, “Medlen’s car literally shook itself apart, at the same time shaking the foundations of the sport itself.”
Eric Medlen’s death would not be in vain, Force vowed. The 14-time champion immediately ordered safety upgrades to all of his team’s Ford Mustangs; changes that included widening the roll cage, upgrading the padding around the drivers’ heads and enhancing the head restraint system to help reduce side-to-side, as well as up-and-down movement.
The modifications became a mission called The Eric Medlen Project. Its purpose is the design of a safer race car and a safer competitive environment. JFR gathered, analyzed and implemented input from nearly every segment of the motorsports community.
The 14-time champion said he believes those changes saved his life last September, when his car broke apart and collided with the Dodge Charger of Kenny Bernstein during eliminations of the O’Reilly Fall Nationals at the Texas Motorplex.
The wreck left Force with a compound fracture of the left ankle and other major injuries to his hands, legs and feet. But he survived, and he was determined that no one else should experience what he and his team did.
That prompted a redesign of the chassis and new rules regarding both materials and their assembly.
 John Medlen has focused his attention on The Eric Medlen Project, continually processing data for what Force called “The Funny Car of the Future.” He also has devoted attention to rookie driver Mike Neff, a young man cut from a similar bolt of fabric as himself: quiet, hard working and smart.
In this return to the city in which he had to decide to remove his son from life support a year ago, John Medlen was private. And the NHRA and its fans respected his silence.
Herbert, meanwhile, was grappling with his emotions after losing both of his sons in late January to an auto accident. One of his coping mechanisms is the B.R.A.K.E.S. — Be Responsible And Keep Everybody Safe — sensible-driving campaign aimed at teenage drivers. Hardly a week had passed since his life-changing loss, when Herbert started the program.
And then we have Robbie Carrico. The grassroots drag racer DNQ for the final dozen “American Idol” contestants recently, but unlike Medlen, Force and Herbert, his setback was merely a detour of his singing-career dream. It was a disappointment to him nonetheless.
But Carrico rose above it quickly, singing the national anthem before Sunday’s final eliminations. As he belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner,” he touched a nerve — certainly for the three generations of veterans in the teeming crowd, but also for the grieving-but-giving Herbert and rebuilding John Force Racing team.
In the past year, all of them — Force, Herbert, Medlen and Carrico — have been pushed onto a stage far bigger than they ever imagined or asked for, with significant objectives at stake.
So Sunday morning in that seemingly routine moment, Carrico’s song was a symbol of America and of these special drag racers: persevering, triumphing through tragedy, sharing what so proudly they hailed, the message so gallantly streaming.