Funny Car racer Terry Haddock emerged uninjured from a massive starting line explosion during the IHRA Torco Northern Nationals in Martin, Michigan. The momentum from the blast rolled the car, fully engulfed in flames, to the 330-foot mark.  Hitting the on-board fire system, Haddock then climbed through the escape hatch to safety.

“I’m not sure what happened,” Haddock said, as he surveyed the damage to his Race Girl-sponsored Funny Car. “We are going to look on the computer and see if we can determined what happened. Hopefully we can find out what caused that. It didn’t throw the rods out, or put any oil down, it just exploded the supercharger. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Funny Car racer Terry Haddock emerged uninjured from a massive starting line explosion during the IHRA Torco Northern Nationals in Martin, Michigan. The momentum from the blast rolled the car, fully engulfed in flames, to the 330-foot mark.  Hitting the on-board fire system, Haddock then climbed through the escape hatch to safety.

“I’m not sure what happened,” Haddock said, as he surveyed the damage to his Race Girl-sponsored Funny Car. “We are going to look on the computer and see if we can determined what happened. Hopefully we can find out what caused that. It didn’t throw the rods out, or put any oil down, it just exploded the supercharger. It doesn’t make sense to me.

"It was running fine on the burnout, I just don’t know why it did that.

“That was the worst explosion I’ve ever encountered.”

Haddock once spent time in a hospital from a previous nitro fire during the 1990s. That experience was enough to encourage his early departure from the flaming machine.

“I knew I just wanted to hit the fire bottles and get out of there,” said Haddock. “I’ve been burned before and I spent a lot of time in the hospital. I knew I didn’t want to be in that situation again.

“I was unbuckling the belts once the fire bottles went off. You’re awful busy in there and it gets hot awful fast. It’s just not worth sticking it out and getting hurt.”

His beautiful Funny Car body was injured, but not destroyed.

“It was a beautiful body, but I’m afraid it blew the burst panel and the windows out,” Haddock said. “We’ll patch it up and be ready to go on Saturday.”

This misfortune comes just two weeks after Haddock scored his second IHRA national event victory in Grand Bend, Ont.
“It’s not what we wanted,” Haddock said. “We are resourceful and we’ll come out of this okay. I’m just glad we didn’t put any oil down to hurt our point total.”