Sidnei Frigo suffered a broken left arm and bruised right hip in his frightening crash at approximately 240 mph during qualifying Friday night for the NHRA SpringNationals at Royal Purple Raceway at Baytown, Texas.

The 44-year-old Brazilian Pro Mod racer underwent corrective surgery Saturday at Memorial Hermann Hospital. According to Anthony Lum, crew chief for the Artivinco Corvette, Frigo is expected to be released early next week and is expected to return home to Sao Paulo.

“He’s going to go home and recover there,” Lum said Saturday, adding that doctors have not estimated a time frame for recovery.

Frigo’s wife, Daniela, and three children were not in Houston this weekend. However, a handful of friends from Brazil who usually accompany Frigo to the races have stayed with him at the hospital. Lum said those three are “taking care of what they need to take care of.”

Lum said, “Sidnei’s doing good. The car did its job; the safety equipment did its job. He’s in good spirits.”

“He’s a competitive racer, and he wants to be back out here already. But we’re going to make sure he heals up just fine. Cars can be replaced. I’m just glad he’s OK. Thank God for Jerry Bickel Race Cars, ProLine, and RK Racecraft, everybody involved Safety’s No. 1. Safety played a big part in keeping his injuries to a minimum.”

Frigo’s car blazed down the left lane but got out of the groove and veered toward the center line and knocked into the 1,000-foot timing cones. It made a hard left turn and crashed into the guard wall head-on, flipped, went airborne, flew over the wall, and rolled several times before coming to rest upside down in the muddy grass.

His scoreboard registered a 5.489-second elapsed time at 255.65 mph, but the run was disallowed. Mike Castellana, competing in the right lane, received no time.

The NHRA followed customary procedure and impounded the car.

“They usually take the car, assess what the damages are, and do their investigations and hold it so that nobody can see it. I don’t blame them I wouldn’t want anybody coming up and just looking at that thing. So they keep it covered up and do their investigations as they need to,” Lum said. “And they’ll let us know when we can have it back. We’ll probably get it back sometime this weekend.”

The NHRA J & A Service Pro Mod Drag Racing Series has eight races remaining on its 2016 schedule. Lum said it’s too early to determine if the team will commission a new race car and hire a substitute driver before Frigo returns to the cockpit.  

“We wanted to run for a championship this year,” Lum said. “He’s the type of guy where he’s going to want to get back in the car as soon as the doctors clear him, as soon as he feels ready to do it. If it happens this season, great. If not, we’re not going to hang our heads. We’re going to keep on moving forward, rebuilding, and trying to give him an even safer car for next time . . . just give him whatever he needs to go out there and feel comfortable and be safe.”

Lum said he arrived on the accident scene about one minute after the Safety Safari emergency crew and was not permitted to approach the race car.

“I understand. They needed to make sure he was perfectly fine and assess the situation,” he said. “I got down there and as just hoping for the best, asking questions of the Safety Safari, seeing if they knew anything. They really couldn’t say much. They just said he was responsive, that he was talking a little bit. He was conscious the whole time. So that was a good sign. They took him in the helicopter, just to be sure. He’s in good hands.”

Lum said he has communicated with Frigo via text messages.

As for the cause of the wreck, Lum said, “I can’t answer that right now, because we really haven’t downloaded the [data from the] run and really looked at it and made sure what happened. So I can’t release that information.”

While the team has not determined an official cause, Lum indicated Frigo had a mechanical failure. “I don’t believe there was, but anything can happen,” he said.

Lum said Frigo texted that he “really didn’t say much. He said he’s OK and that he’s sorry that it happened.

“He wants to be out here, racing again. It’s not going to hold him down,” Lum said. “He’s a racer at heart. He’s competitive. He’ll be back.”

The incident, understandably, made a huge impact on Lum, 26, who’s in his first crew chief role after serving as Courtney Force’s car chief at John Force Racing.

“I’ve never seen a car go over the retaining wall and do a bunch of flips like that, not one that I was working on. I’ve seen it happen a bunch of times, but not the car I’ve been working on. It’s definitely scary. A lot of things are running through your mind. You don’t know what’s happening. A lot of things were running through my mind. My only concern was ‘Is he OK?’ Honestly, I didn’t care about the car at that point. I just wanted to make sure Sidnei was alive and he was going to be fine – which he is.”  

Many drag-racing observers compared the nature of Frigo’s crash to that of Top Sportsman driver Ronnie Davis’ fatal accident during the April 9 PDRA race at North Carolina’s Rockingham Dragway that also seriously injured photojournalist Ian Tocher. Lum happened to be at that race but said he didn’t have any flashback to that incident.

“I wasn’t thinking of anything else but if Sidnei’s OK. That’s all I was worried about,” he said. ‘I hate to see that happen to anyone. It was unfortunate they do happen like that.”

Frigo' accident was the second in the Pro Mod class Friday, and both crashes affected the elimination lineup. Jonathan Gray hit the wall in the opening qualifying session as his left rear tire exploded and shredded a large portion of the body. Gray’s Precision Turbo Camaro was heavily damaged, and his team left the premises by Saturday.

Mustang driver Billy Glidden and Chevelle driver Jim Whiteley, the Nos. 17 and 18 qualifiers, moved into the field for the Saturday evening eliminations. Glidden took the No. 4 slot that Frigo had earned, and Whiteley was awarded the No. 6 spot that Gray had secured.

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