WILL RETURNS TO TESTING; JIM O COMMENTS
Mon, 2007-02-05 22:13
Just one day after a horrific crash during testing in Las Vegas, Top Fuel driver Hillary Will returned to testing.
Following the incident, Jim Oberhofer, Will's
crew chief was reviewing the accident and shaping plan for the upcoming
Winternationals: "We're still looking at everything that's available to us,"
said Jim O. "The thing that we can kind of determine is that maybe the tire
started delaminating, probably just past half-track, and the tire pieces started
to cause some damage to the car. Subsequent to that a piece of the tire came
off and hit the wing which basically sent the car out of control. But it is
still too early to speculate on anything. We're looking at everything, Goodyear
is looking at everything, and the tech people at NHRA are looking at
everything. There are a lot of things to look at and while we want to get
answers so that we can prevent this from happening again, we don't want to rush
to judgement and we certainly don't want to miss anything. While everyone
outside those that I just mentioned are quick to say this or that caused the
accident, we have to be sure.
"Overlooked in this whole thing is that
our Attac-built dragster did it's job and the main thing and end result is that
Hillary is safe. She was back at the track on Saturday watching her
crew prepare a new car. Work on that continued into Sunday and today (Monday)
we plan to run some test laps to about half track. We just got a new Attac race
car before we left for testing and it was practically race-ready and that's what
the guys have been working on. The test runs will get Hillary comfortable with
the new car and allow us to checkout the new pieces (equipment) on the car. We
want to make sure everything works well before we
head to Pomona."
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