Violent Funny Car Crash During Qualifying Claims Two-Time Top Fuel Champ

ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. — They walked silently but purposefully to the starting line at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park Sunday morning.
The National Hot Rod Ass’n’s four-car Kalitta Motorsports contingent was missing part of its heart and soul. Scott Kalitta, its 46-year-old Funny Car driver who had distinguished himself with back-to-back Top Fuel championships in the mid-1990s, was gone, killed in a vicious crash Saturday afternoon.
Scott Kalitta never knew he had broken into the 16-car field at No. 13 and was scheduled to face Robert Hight in the first round of eliminations of the Lucas Oil NHRA SuperNationals.
So, his crew members and colleagues — Top Fuel drivers Dave Grubnic and Hillary Will and their teams, along with cousin Doug Kalitta’s Top Fuel team — wanted to represent him.

SOLIDARITY: A group of nearly 40 crew members and colleagues gather on the starting line where Scott Kalitta would have staged his Funny Car Sunday at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park. (NHRA Photo)

Nearly 40 strong, they gathered at the spot where Scott Kalitta would have staged his DHL Toyota Solara. And there they broke their silence, cheering Hight as he made a slow solo pass in his Auto Club Ford Mustang down the lonely, all-too-quiet quarter-mile. The crowd rose to its feet in a show of respect.
“While I was idling down the track,” Hight said, “I could see on the [video screen] the crowd and a lot of the Kalitta family and team. The motor was running, but everything was quiet. It was just emotional.”
Hight knew all too well what they were experiencing, for he and his John Force Racing family had endured those same empty feelings barely 15 months ago with the loss of teammate Eric Medlen following a testing crash.
John Medlen, Eric Medlen’s father and crew chief for eventual Funny Car runner-up Mike Neff, visited the Kalitta camp Saturday night to comfort them. Hight didn’t. “I don’t want to bother anybody. Everybody deals with things in their own way,” he said. “I just wish I had a racer in the other lane.”  
Kalitta, a two-time Top Fuel champion who came out of retirement in 1999, drove a funky-painted dragster for sponsor Jesse James and switched to driving a Funny Car three years ago, was pronounced dead Saturday from multiple injuries at Raritan Bay Medical Center in Old Bridge.
Kalitta’s engine exploded near the finish line in the final qualifying session for Sunday’s race. The car continued off the end of the track at an estimated 300 miles per hour, struck a pole that held up a catch-fence, catapulted into a crane that anchored an unmanned ESPN camera and shattered into shrapnel.
His widow, Kathy, and sons, Corey, 14, and Colin, 8, were not at the race.
Connie Kalitta, Scott Kalitta’s father and team owner/crew chief, left the track Saturday and flew to Palmetto, Fla., to meet with his son’s family. Accompanying him was nephew Doug Kalitta, who drives the team’s Mac Tools Dragster.
The family and team chose not to issue any statements throughout the weekend. However, Todd Myers, Kalitta Motorsports spokesman, said the family appreciates all the prayers and condolences. He said services are pending.
After their show of solidarity at the beginning of the race, the Kalitta Motorsports family gathered privately in their hospitality area and drank a toast to the fallen driver, who their team Web site called “our champion, our hero, our friend.”
Throughout the race track, drivers and team owners tried to come to grips with the loss of a second competitor in 15 months and the third since June 2004. Make that the fourth since 1996.

FATALITY: Scott Kalitta (left, with father, Connie) died Saturday after a violent crash during the final round of Funny Car qualifications. (NHRA Photo)

Before he won the Funny Car trophy Sunday, Tim Wilkerson said, “I want to get out of this place so bad, I can’t stand it. My heart’s just breaking for Conrad (Kalitta). It’s a tremendous tragedy for all of us. Hopefully, Conrad will find some way to get through this. That’s all I’m worried about, to tell you the truth.”
“I’ll admit, I was very distracted today,” Top Fuel’s Doug Foley said. “You try to tune everything out when the visor goes down, but my heart just wasn’t in it today.
“Just like Scott, I have two sons,” the racer from Sewell, N.J., said, “and it really makes you think long and hard about what we do. Racers are a different breed, and I know he loved drag racing as much as anyone, but it seems a little crazy at times like this.”
New Jersey State Police Sgt. Julian Castellanos said, “Our Fatal Accident Unit is investigating all conditions surrounding the accident, and we will have the results as soon as we conclude our investigation. When we do this type of investigation, we look at the circumstances, the car, the raceway and conditions and then determine a cause.”
He said the inquiry “is no different than with a motor-vehicle accident.”
Wilkerson called Kalitta “a terrific guy” and said, “It’s nothing but a large family out here. We’re all family. We’re all brothers. I wish there was some way I could do something for Conrad, but there’s nothing I can do. I love those guys. Everybody here’s your friend.”
As for the cause of the accident, Wilkerson said, “This was a very unique situation. I don’t think you can pin any part of the run on any certain thing at all. You can’t say it was the chassis or tire or tune-up or the track conditions.”
Legendary driver/team owner Don Prudhomme said, “I’ve been here (in the sport) a number of years, and I haven’t witnessed anything like that. These cars are, for the most part, pretty damn safe. In life, there are certain times that things happen that I can’t explain it. He got airborne down there, and he happened to hit a post that would be virtually impossible to do.
“There are thousands of runs they make here. I went down there, and I looked at it,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I was just stunned. I would’ve never thought that that could have happened. I never thought that he could have got airborne, got over the guardrail and hit the post. It’s a post that hooks onto the catch-net.
“I’m bewildered,” Prudhomme said. “I don’t think it’s the track’s fault. I just don’t. If I thought it was the track’s fault and it was a dangerous race track, I wouldn’t be here. You don’t know what could happen till it happens. I’d be the first one screaming if I thought it was negligence …but I don’t.”
While some, especially non-racing-savvy observers, wondered if the NHRA would cancel or postpone the event, team owners and racers understood their unwritten code.
“The race will go on, yeah, yeah. It has to,” Prudhomme said Saturday night. “There’s a lot involved, you know?”
Forrest Lucas, who owns a two-car Top Fuel team that includes son Morgan Lucas and whose company sponsored this event, said Sunday of the situation, “It’s like a bad intersection — nobody does anything about it until something bad happens.”
He called Kalitta’s wreck “really freaky” and said. “Hopefully, things will be fixed to where it won’t happen again, and I’m sure it will.”
“The show goes on,” Lucas said.
But it doesn’t really go on with joy.
As Wilkerson put it, “It was like somebody turned down the volume in the whole place (Saturday) about three o’clock.”