Hey NHRA and ESPN, here’s your opportunity to take the super high road. With all the data that exists, the video, and all the eyewitness accounts from professionals on at the track, where’s the 60 Minutes-style investigative report on the death of Eric Medlen and of John Force’s Motorplex crash? Where’s the computer simulation showing details and explaining exactly, split-second by split-second what caused these absolutely freak occurrences to kill one of our popular drivers of the Next Generation and sideline our fourteen-time Champ?
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Excuse me Mr. Compton, Mr. Archambeault, Mr. Trace, Mr. Light, and ESPN’s Paul Page, director Bruce Watson and producer Eric Swearingen, we now have Eric Medlen as an icon; he’s now a slogan, an armband, a piece of black tape slashed through official NHRA Competition numbers and a five buck sticker. Case closed? I doubt the Medlen family will ever take anything to the court system as Julie Russell did over the cover-up in her husband Darrell’s horrible crash. Remember Graham Light’s contrite, made-for-TV “We’ll have that report in the next thirty days” statement?
How about a televised professional racer’s roundtable, a discussion of what went wrong and how each crewmember and driver and NHRA Safety Safari member can get the story directly instead of orchestrated, sanitized teleconferences for the media. And if it is known what really punctured Eric Medlen’s tire, did the same thing happen to John? Is this a potential issue with all funny car chassis or is it just an affliction unique to the Force cars?
Does NHRA need to have the same crew on Monday test days that is there during Eliminations on Sunday? On Monday test sessions, do they have the guys who hop over the fence after every pair of nitro cars on Sunday to look for Dzus buttons, screwdrivers, ratchets and junk every time a nitro car makes a pass? Do our professional drivers deserve the same thirty to thirty-five NHRA Safety Safari crew positions and an on-site life-flight chopper for every test day?
The re-running of the John Force family saga is touching and compelling. The stale “Driving Force” show was a calculated launching pad for Ashley Force’s pro career; it has done its job, but all that hype has now caught up the ESPN and NHRA management, turning the NHRA POWERade TV show into another weekly Force Racing ESPN show.
John and his PR machine have done their job very well; I have no quarrel with any of them. The problem is the blurring of the line between the NHRA POWERade infomercial, the John Force family/NHRA POWERade infomercial has been accomplished, there is no difference between drag racing and John Force and with that NHRA and ESPN have officially “Jumped the Shark”. The great American public sees there are no other important funny car players other than those who drive for John Force Racing or are contenders in the contrived Countdown to 1.
We can all feel better with our Eric Medlen “True Hero” and “Get Well Soon, John” stickers too, while we wait for NHRA and ESPN to do their job by coming clean with an investigative report. Remember what used to be part of the NHRA letterhead: “DEDICATED TO SAFETY”.
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