By the time the Budweiser car had finally thumped to a stop in the left lane about 100-ft from the end’s left turn, Brandon had quickly unbuckled and was leaning to get out of the cockpit. He was moving under his own power and looked OK, which was relayed by the top end track announcer back to the track tower almost before the car was stopped. Safety workers on foot near the end of the car jumped the walls, surrounded his car, and were helping him fully get out of the car and away from the engine. The Safety Safari crew was right atop the car’s engine ready for fire or any other contingency. NHRA tech inspectors, who had been up at the far end of the track primarily for electronically checking all the cars’ fuel to make sure everyone was legal, were also in the crowd of about 15 people now around the car. They were zeroing in on the left rear wheel area, as were the couple of Goodyear tech people who had been up at that end taking tire temps on all the cars after a
run, to deliver to the teams for analysis later. They are looking for tires that have a temperature outside the recommended range – around 280F degrees for a Top Fuel tire, for example. If those tires start pushing near 300F degrees or above, they want to know about it as soon as possible.
The dead dragster listed far to the left like a beached ship and wasn’t going anywhere until a spare wheel/tire combo was bolted on. Brandon had his helmet off and was on the balls of his feet as he paced to the mid-front of the rail then back to the rear axle to closely look at the smoking wheel and chassis. With lots of adrenaline being burned off by him, he exclaimed to no one in particular, “It may have hurt the frame.” Indeed, his crew decided later to switch to their spare frame for the rest of the meet, and stayed atop the time sheets in the next round.
It had only been a minute or so and by now Bernstein’s crew was there, along with his dad Kenny, and his girlfriend. With tears streaming, she ran immediately over to Brandon and gave him many tight hugs as he kept reassuring, “I’m fine. I’m OK. I’m fine. It’s OK, I’m fine.” She was obviously still shaken minutes after the incident. Bernstein Sr. wasn’t so full of love;– he confirmed Brandon was OK, and then prowled around inspecting the car.
The Budweiser/Lucas Oil crew by now had lifted the frame up by hand to get it high enough to support and remove the still hot and chewed up rim, and then installed a spare tire to roll the car off-track and take it back to their pit. The NHRA tech inspectors had the damaged wheel, whose center section was intact, but the edges were ground up and rubber parts were still attached. They lifted it over the wall and put it on a motorized cart to take it away; presumably to their inspection trailer. The cart and ground rim tire got about 10 feet when Bernstein Sr. suddenly appeared across from them on the trackside of the wall saying in a raised voice, “Hey! Wait! Stop! Not so fast! Stay right here!” The cart stopped.
THE AFTERMATH
Bernstein Sr. was not going to let this tire incident go so quietly into the good night. Strong words from him to the NHRA tech inspectors and Goodyear techs followed. It’s not really important what they were exactly. Basically, with his wounded car being towed away and his nearby son who had obviously cheated severe injury or the unthinkable at 320+ mph, he distinctly expressed in no uncertain vocabulary to the assembled officials his extreme reservations about the quality and safety of the current tire being used in Top Fuel, and that this conversation was going to continue in the NHRA Tech Trailer with the inspectors and Goodyear people after tonight’s show.
It did too for a solid 30-45 minutes after all the qualifying runs were over and normally when everyone is packing up after a long day. And this day was even longer because of rain delays and it was getting closer and closer to midnight. No one here was going home real soon though. The experienced head Goodyear tech looked closely over the remains of the tire again and again, and then examined the rim, and then spent more time closely eyeballing the tire remnants to try to see if a clear failure cause could be discerned from them.
NHRA’s inspectors were there, and along with Bernstein Sr., stood by hoping for the answer(s). Talk about forensic investigation. Being able to read tire shards and give a definitive reason for it turning into them makes those CSI TV shows look like a warm-up. In the past, tire remains have gone back to Goodyear’s tire tech facilities for close electronic inspection, and we think this would be the action with this tire also.
It was fair enough that Bernstein Sr. certainly had plenty of fatherly emotions invested in what had just happened, and no small amount of Bud’s money, too. But this was the only tire that “went down” in the Top Fuel ranks over the entire weekend, and plenty of bad-fast passes were made in subsequent rounds. But in a bizarre twist, the event-leading Budweiser/Lucas Oil team staged with their spare car and were ready to launch in Round 3 up against Morgan Lucas. Lucas left and ran a stodgy 4.858/245.23 and the Budweiser car just sat stationary after bulbing a couple of lights. Whaaaat? If you had never seen a drag race before, you would have thought they had had a catastrophic hidden failure or had just thrown the round for no apparent reason.
Turns out it was announced they thought they had a bent frame, on this spare chassis remember with who knows how many rounds on it, and had only staged with the hope Lucas would red-light, and they could at least pick up some points for advancing another round. The aftermath and repercussions of Cory Mac’s Bristol crash might have influenced that decision; the shredded tire earlier in the meet, too. Now, with the track conditions optimal for 330+ mph runs, and the Bud car clearly capable of getting down the track, it would certainly have been tempting fate a second time this weekend with a bent frame. They packed it up to race another day. 
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