Lyle Barnett will never be able to say he has a burning passion for drag racing without thinking of his greatest fight. 

Barnett, of Robbins, NC, shakes his head at the irony of two words which perfectly describe the fight of and for his life a little over a year ago. 

Barnett, who in 2015 was a Drag Radial racer competing in the Radial vs. The World division at the No Mercy 6 event hosted by South Georgia Motorsports Park when a fuel injection failure engulfed his C-5 Corvette. 

The intensity of the fire subjected Barnett to 28 seconds of direct exposure to the flames which resulted in third-degree burns to 15-percent of his body. 

The painful rehab, the horrible memories and the passion to return came full circle two weeks ago when a scarred, but gracious Barnett hoisted a trophy high above his head after winning the Leaf Spring title at the Lights Out 8 event at the same facility where he feared he would lose his life just months earlier. 

“I made the turn off the track, and I was just glad I didn’t have my radio on because it was pretty emotional at the starting line for my Dad and the rest of the crew,” Barnett said. “I made the turn off the track, and I was fist bumping and beating on the steering wheel. I got out of the car, and there were several golf carts and a car, their headlights were coming at me, and it was just people pumped up. They were happy I won. 

“Ozzy Moya’s brother, the owner of SGMP, was one of the one’s that came down. I just fell into his arms man. It was emotional. It’s a hell of a way to come back.”

To understand the magnitude of the victory, one must understand the magnitude of the fight to race again. 

“The accident didn’t take long to turn into a worst case scenario,” Barnett explained. “The cockpit became engulfed in flames, as I was running 175 miles per hour through the finish line. We were on probably a 190 mile per hour hit, and it blew up about 400 or 500 feet or so.”

“Initially, my first thoughts were, ‘I’ve got to get out.” 

“I knew at speed, when you’re on fire at speed your Halon systems don’t do you any good. I heard a lot of, ‘Well why didn’t you pull the fire bottles?” 

“To answer that, you know these cars aren’t sealed up you know like the cockpit of a jet. They’ve got holes in the windows for the door release. They’re not sealed, so when you pull a fire bottle at 170 miles per hour, and it just sucks it out of it. You can’t, fire bottles are made if you’re sitting, really if you’re going slow or sitting still. So I knew I had to get out. I couldn’t get the fire, the handle was very accessible, but I was swallowed up trying to bat the flames away.” 

“There was a time after it hit the wall that I thought, ‘This is it. This is how I’m going to die. There’s no way I’m going to survive,” 

In a world where fuel Funny Car racers walk away singed from an inferno, Barnett wasn’t blessed with the same equipment. 

“My hands, my feet, and my face were burned really bad,” Barnett described. “Really the worst was my lungs. I inhaled a bunch of that stuff. I did not have a fresh air system or anything like that.”

The severity of his injuries initially were enough to lead doctors and even his parents to believe Barnett would not survive. 

“There’s a lot of fight left in this dog,” Barnett said emphatically. 

Barnett spent two months at the JMS Burn Center in Augusta, Ga., where he underwent numerous surgeries and skin grafts to repair the wounds. 

“There were like 12 just grafting surgeries alone in the hospital,” Barnett explained. “But it burned my face pretty good. I had to have eyelid reconstruction back in September of 2016. They literally took skin off of my neck and made new eyelids because they pretty much just melted what I had together.

Barnett, for 11-and-a-half months, lived life with his eyes sewn 75 percent shut. 

“I just had a peep hole for almost a year while my face graft matured,” Barnett said with a grimace. “And then once they felt like my face graft was mature, they went in, they released, they call them tarsorrhaphy, they released my eyes, and then in the same surgery they literally made new eyelids and they are fully functional. 

“I can blink, I can close my eyes when I sleep. The big 50/50 shot I had was whether I was going to have tear ducts. And I do. My tear ducts work, they tear, but they do not drain.”

A close friend even went as far as to give Barnett the nickname of the “Blinking Genie.” 

“I have to blink to clear them out because they do not drain,” Barnett explain. “The good thing is they do work, so I don’t have to put drops in every three minutes or anything crazy like that. I do have functional tearing ducts, but I do not have the drains, which is okay. Of the worst, I got the best outcome.” 

There was no hardship which would deter Barnett, as he plotted his return to the strip from the hospital bed. 

“Both my Dad and my Grandfather both drag raced back in their early years, so I’ve always had a real passion for drag racing,” Barnett said. “I started when I was young; I started back racing at 15. And it’s just something that I’ve always done, and I’ve always loved. 

“I’m not going to say my life revolves around it, but a large portion of my good friends and people that I talk to on a daily basis and hang out with are from racing.”

Barnett credits JMS psychiatrist Dr. Rivell for standing in his corner, supporting his return to racing. 

“She was a firm believer in if the horse bucks you off, you get back on it,” Barnett said. “She repeatedly drove home the point, ‘Don’t let something like this defeat you.” 

“She may not have necessarily been getting at when you get better, get back in a bottom four-second radial car. But, you know, even if I just went back out there and made a pass and said, ‘Okay, that was good enough for me.” 

“And I didn’t know at first. I was unsure as to how I was going to feel.” 

Barnett made his first run after the accident in a bracket racing truck in June 2016. He returned to a Drag Radial car in October 2016. 

Barnett said he learned some hard lessons in the experience. Even though he was wearing a 15 Impact firesuit, his shoes and gloves were SFI 5, He had an open shield on his helmet, and had no helmet sock on.  

“I didn’t necessarily have on what I should have,” Barnett said. “I had on a good suit, but I did not have on good gloves, good shoes, and I had my face shield up on my helmet.  Unfortunately, the best lessons sometimes are learned the hard way. This may not have been the way I wanted to learn it obviously. 

“We’re a very reactive sport. I’ve said it many times, when we should be proactive about that kind of stuff, it’s always a reaction to what happens to someone else. It’s the same thing when somebody goes fast. It’s the same way with what happened to me. There were a lot of people that weren’t prepared. After my crash, there was a lot of safety upgrades amongst our racing community. I hate it that it had to happen that way, but I’m also okay with it. I took the blow, and I’m here to talk about it and teach others the do’s and don’t’s.

“As long as people take action, and have learned from my mistake, I’m good with that. We’re a much safer sport, I think, because of my wreck.”

Barnett experienced a horrific reminder on Friday evening of Lights Out 8 during Radial vs. The World qualifying when Steven Fereday’s car became engulfed in fire and burned to the ground. Fereday escaped without injury. For Barnett, the vision of his fellow racer’s car was an all too familiar situation. 

“I was actually standing back in the staging lanes when Steven caught fire,” Barnett recalled. “My immediate instinct, I just took off running. By the time I got to the starting line, Josh Ledford saw me, and called me, and said ‘Look, he’s out, he’s okay, everything’s fine.” 

“That was scary because I know what he felt, I know what he was thinking. But all three of them told me, ‘Thanks, man.” 

“It just scared me because I knew, I’ve been there and I got the sharp end of the hammer. So, it was scary, but I’m just glad. I went over to Fereday’s pit and talked to him for a while after the fire. We talked about even like in my fire; it brought some weak points in this car to the forefront that they’re going to fix. I’m just glad everybody was okay because he torched it. Fire shows no mercy.” 

Barnett’s return to drag radial racing was not just a return, it was a statement. 

Barnett’s ’69 Dart, which runs in the Leaf Spring division, a classification which limits suspension configuration, not only won from the No. 1 qualifying position but also established a new record (4.28, 173) in the process. 

“I think of all my wins in my career, this one by far stands out,” Barnett said. “To come out of there with the world record, we accomplished so much in such a short amount of time, but the win just capped it off. It was just unbelievable. 

“I carry some gnarly scars, and they’ll always be with me. So there’s always a reminder there that you better be wearing what you’re supposed to.”

And one had better have a lot of passion too, the kind that burns so bright no obstacle is too tough to overcome.