Volume IX, Issue 10, Page 8

Is Everybody Feeling Better Now?

10/9/2007

ow that there’s some distance from the horrific death of Eric Medlen and John Force’s spectacular top-end crash with Kenny Bernstein, it looks like the healing has begun.  Brandon Bernstein and J.R. Todd won their Wally’s for good friend Eric and because Eric was smiling down.  Force and Robert Hight have dedicated their victories to Eric because Eric was looking down on them. 

The ESPN TV show is getting back to the focus on the Countdown, their old clichés and every aspect of John Force Racing except providing some in-depth reporting on what really happened to Eric and the chassis he rode in, in the seconds before he was literally shaken to death, and what was the reason John’s car ripped apart at speed. 

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There is incredibly detailed information from the eyewitnesses who were at Gainesville that fateful day, there is the run data on the computer knowing exactly when the tire on Eric’s Mustang was punctured and it should know precisely when his foot came out of the throttle.  There must be some scientific, visual explanation of exactly what happened to cause the incredible G-forces scrambling Medlen’s brain. 

We also have a detailed slow motion High Definition ESPN video record of John’s crash and what has been described as an aircraft style “Black Box” supposedly loaded with data in split-second detail.  We’ve seen just about every frame of John’s crash over and over again and viewed a sedated bedside satellite interview of Force with Paul Page and Mike Dunn.

I heard that there were safety specialists from Ford Racing, the finest experts on the job, investigating Eric’s incident; these are Crash Safety Engineers who have studied data covering everything from the Indy Racing League to NASCAR to Formula 1.  Now that’s impressive!  What were their findings so far? Is there anything, I mean anything, that we are still doing wrong today in any of the other funny cars in competition that is even remotely like the events killing Eric Medlen and hospitalizing John Force; the best known personality in drag racing other than Wally Parks?  Come on, is there anything at all?  Give us some information; we can take it!

We’ve seen the things that John Medlen, heading up the Eric Medlen Project, has done to patch the Force racecars and we’ve seen the new pipe, head shields, padding and new multi-point harnesses on Force’s car and, we hope, on other floppers on the tour.  We’ve all seen the tribute stickers being sold for $5 bucks at the Nitro Mall and the Force Racing trailer; great sentiment.

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