NHRA nitro-class fans are well-aware of the NHRA-mandated Safety Shutoff Controller that Dave Leahy developed at Delaware, Ohio-headquartered Electrimotion. The presence of automatic shutoffs started in 2009.

“The safety box was designed to shut the car off in case the driver can’t, for whatever reason – on fire, knocked out, unconscious,” championship Funny Car crew chief Dickie Venables said.

Now, Clay Millican and Tony Schumacher are among the Top Fuel drivers whose crew chiefs have the power to cut off the dragster’s engine from the starting line.

It’s the latest addition to a system that has evolved from the initial Safety Shut-off Box to include a small, track-mounted shut-off receiver and a car-attached device that helps prevent oildowns. Mandatory devices on the car and a guard wall-mounted transmitter that communicates with a safety-box receiver can save a driver in distress. They can stop the flow of fuel and turn off the ignition to the 10,000-horsepower engine and deploy the parachutes in response to a variety of triggers (manifold burst-panel rupture, fire-bottle activation, excessive oil-pan pressure, dragster rear-wing failure, driver pressing a steering-wheel-mounted button, or driver incapacitation).

Dave Grubnic, crew chief for Clay Millican’s Parts Plus / Great Clips / UNOH Dragster, might have been the most recent one to use the NHRA-approved remote control.

Two weeks ago, at Brainerd, Minn., the team was elated that Millican recorded his career-best elapsed time (a 3.696-second pass at 326.32) in his Round 1 victory. That E.T. reflected a significant three-hundredth-of-a-second improvement (from his previous best clocking of 3.72 seconds). And Millican gushed that “my mate Grubby sure cut it loose, all right. He really poured the power to it through the middle of the racetrack, and it paid off.

But just as quickly and decisively, Grubnic had to shelve any urge to push for more. As a testament to his wisdom and restraint for the sake of safety, Grubnic activated the remote control during Millican’s quarterfinal run. The dragster had dropped a cylinder immediately after the launch, and Grubnic reeled it in.

During the teardown, the crew discovered that Grubnic’s instincts were spot-on and that halting the pass was a blessing in disguise. They saw that one of the rear wing mounts on the car was broken.

Said Millican, “If we had made another 326-mph run, the rear wing maybe would have been broken off. If that had happened, it can’t be run again until it’s sent back to the manufacturer – because without that wing the car acts like an arrow without feathers. You have no control. We have a safety system in place where the crew chief can shut the throttle off. Grubby saw the cylinder out early in the run, and he’s the one who shut me off. We weren’t going to win that race with seven cylinders, anyway.”

U.S. Army Dragster driver Tony Schumacher said he has been zipping down the track when assistant crew chief Neal Strausbaugh has jerked the car to a premature stop with the push of a button.

Schumacher said, “In a Top Fuel car, the motor’s behind you. I can’t see cylinders go out. You can feel ‘em, unless they go out early. We’re trying to make this live TV package work, which seems to be working great. And to do that, [it’s smart] to give the crew chiefs a way, if they see something flickering that has the potential to cause an oildown, to shut the car off. It’s awkward in the car, because it just shuts it off [abruptly]. But we can’t see some of that stuff, like a sparkplug coming apart or color changes in the cylinders and the exhaust. A few times Neal has shut me off when it might have been low E.T. of the round.”

When they huddle around the computer in the hauler back at the pit, each time they see that Schumacher could have completed each run without any problems. Just the same, Schumacher said he approved. “It was the right decision. Safety first,” he said. “And at the end of the year, you look back on times drivers slowed the race down, you don’t want to be on that list. It’s our job to evolve the safety and the cleanliness.”

Moreover, he said, “We’re trying to make a better show. Ultimately, we are an entertainment business. We are a competitive business; we’ve got to win. But if winning shuts the track down for 30 minutes at a time, the whole system’s broke. So the NHRA shutting the cars off when you’ve got problems, is it going to cost a race here and there? It could. But is that a bad thing? No. I think we’re doing it for the right reasons.”

So sometimes it’s clearly a matter of safety. Sometimes it’s a matter of oildown prevention. Either way, Mike Green, Schumacher’s crew chief, and Strausbaugh, devised their own hand-held version of the shut-off system. Green said he wasn’t sure which teams have the remote control but he knows that “we made our own.”

Green said Funny Car team owners Chuck and Del Worsham have one ready for they conduct licensing passes for aspiring pro drag racers.

“The safety system the NHRA put up is very well accepted. It’s active and working,” Schumacher said. “Any time any sanctioning body comes up with what we like to think is a solution to the problem of a driver being knocked out, how can anybody be anything but OK with it?” Taking it one step further not only can’t hurt but it has spared at least two teams some ugly consequences.