Leah Pruett walks away from unbelievable crash in St. Louis

[scootro]

[Shaggin Wagon]

Just like a Dodge to blow apart for no reason....

[bubbaearl]

garlits did that regularly once they went rear engine and stretching the frames .

[Trip McNeely]

Just like a Dodge to blow apart for no reason....

Too much power.

[cool cat]

That was wild. What causes that, metal fatigue?

[BP]

It's not very typical for the front to fall off.

[Strychnine]

That was wild. What causes that, metal fatigue?

I've read concerns about the distance between vertical/upright support pieces on frames. In 2018 NHRA mandated a max distance between uprights, and this is the first breakup like this since then.

If you watch closely, you can see the failure start before the car breaks and it makes sense. In the interview, she said that she had been fighting the car all day and I think what failed was the lateral and horizontal flexing that the car was doing.

If you watch the close-up of the car, you can see she's fighting to keep it strait. It makes a big move in and she pulls it back. I think that's when the chassis said 'Nope'. Look at the right side of the car (left from watching the vid) because a kink appears right around the "M" in front of the capsule. I think that left only one of the long chassis rails to support those forces and they just aren't that strong. The rest was wild ride. I'd be curious if they add more stabilizers to as a result of this.

It's not very typical for the front to fall off.

Hilarious skit... but i don't know why it irritates the fuck out of me when people reference it.

[kingjason]

Parachutes saved her ass. Think of the stress at that joint right there though. Then as the car is bucking the wing is holding it down in front and just snapped right in half.

[svauto-erotic855]

That was wild. What causes that, metal fatigue?

The front long part of the chassis on a Top Fuel dragster is not a very highly stressed member. The top will be in tension at the well joints where it attaches to the cage/cell that the driver sits in and in all likelihood the welds failed at that junction point.

[bird_dog0347]

Hilarious skit... but i don't know why, it irritates the fuck out of me when people reference it.

[cool cat]

Thank you for posting that. I've never seen that before.

[Ruffdaddy]

The front long part of the chassis on a Top Fuel dragster is not a very highly stressed member. The top will be in tension at the well joints where it attaches to the cage/cell that the driver sits in and in all likelihood the welds failed at that junction point.

*not highly stressed when behaving as intended.

It looks like horizontal movement and the necessary steering corrections added a lot more stress than anticipated (which is pretty in line with what strych posted). It could have been low cycle fatigue or a catastrophic failure from buckling...not really sure based on the quick video.

[Mach1]

I can't believe there isn't any diagonal bracing in the middle of the chassis! I guess there is no suspension so the frame needs the flex.

[Ruffdaddy]

Damn i sure hope that's only like a 90% complete frame. Just a few gussets would go a long way in the region of failure.

[svauto-erotic855]

*not highly stressed when behaving as intended.

Good point and spot-on. In all likelihood one weld on the top failed either through fatigue or from poor weld penetration almost immediately during the launch. Going from four rails to three would induce torsional stress into a structure that is not suitable for handling torsional stress; that torsional stress would require steering input to compensate for. Shortly thereafter the second weld on the top failed and suddenly you only had the bending strength of the lower part of the chassis holding things together before those welds or the material immediately adjacent to them failed. In reality we're discussing a chicken or the egg problem but the end results were the same. The front end tore off. I could tell exactly what happened if I could inspect the chassis but I suspect people that are better at chassis Building & Design than me have already come to the same conclusions I mentioned