All the forethought in the world can go into preparing any racing vehicle, but occasionally, cars and crew do the darndest things.

At the NHRA Southern Nationals weeks ago, that was evident in drag racing’s premier divisions.

In Top Fuel, Clay Millican was KO’d in the first round of eliminations because his car couldn’t make a proper burnout. More on the reason why in a sec. Over in Funny Car, on consecutive days, the Funny Car campaigned by Alexis DeJoria was “timed out” because her entry couldn’t complete the staging process. More on that, too.

“Those things happen,” said Cruz Pedregon, the NHRA Funny Car champion in 1992 and 2008. “It happens in all racing. Like, circle track. Imagine if you had one banzai lap around a dirt track to get everything frickin’ right instead of 30. But that’s all you get in drag racing.

“You have one shot at it in our sport, eliminations especially. This sport does not care. You’ve got to be sharp, you’ve got to be on it or you’re going to get beat. You’ve got to have your (expletive) together or you’re going home.”

Pedregon said he once had virtually the same issue on his car that sidelined DeJoria.

“It was a deal where the body height wasn’t right, and the (starting-line) beams were reading the front lip of the car and not the tire,” he said. “I remember I backed up and did some things to overcome that. When I rolled forward, I kept rolling even though my crew chief was telling me to stop. I was thinking, ‘I think I know what’s happened. I hope I’m right.’ So I kept rolling forward until the top light came on.”

In Millican’s case, crew chief Mike Kloeber said he simply didn’t provide enough H20 in the water box for his driver to be able to execute a burnout. That led to problems that forced Millican to shut the car off, exit the car for a safe position trackside, and watch Justin Ashley get a bye run into the quarterfinals.

“That’s something that Clay and I both vowed the first time it happened; that we would never let something so simple keep us from making a run,” Kloeber said. “The first time, it happened to us at Epping, N.H., and we lost to ‘The Greek’ (Chris Karamesines).

“There's no way to describe how low your heart sinks to your feet when your car can't do a burnout and you know you have a legitimate chance of winning the round and ultimately the race. It's a feeling I hope no one ever has to experience. You feel like there are big, giant arrows pointing at you like, ‘That guy right there. He's the one who always puts the water down -- the guy who didn’t put the water down this time.’ ”

Millican said he’s not about to fault Kloeber for a mistake because “it's all of our fault, and we truly say that. I can lose on the biggest holeshot, I can red light or we can smoke the tires -- it's all on every one of us.

“Fifteen or 20 years ago or whenever we did that at Epping, we were like, ‘That’s the stupidest thing ever. How could we do that?’ And dang if we didn’t do it again.”

But oversights and unintentional mistakes are simply part of racing, right? Ohhhhh, no. Not for Mike Kloeber.

“That’s not part of my racing, I'm sorry,” he protested. “That's just inexcusable.”

Such was the case once at an IHRA race at St. Louis, when the then-Werner-sponsored dragster refused to start in the staging lanes. No matter what Kloeber and crew tried, the engine would not turn over and come to life.

When they got it back to the pits -- “and didn’t touch a thing,” Millican said -- it fired right up.

“It was as simple as us going and getting gasoline from the official fuel company and it was racing gas - high-octane stuff. But these cars want El Cheap 87 octane to start on, not race fuel. A different fuel bottle, it cranked right up.”

“That was a painful lesson,” Kloeber chipped in.

The worst case of unforced errors, in Pedregon’s opinion, happens much more frequently -- and every time he’s guilty of it, it drives him nuts.

“That’s when you have a good car and the driver screws up,” the owner/driver said.

He added with a chuckle, “If anything screws up, let it be the car, not the driver. That’s the way I look at it.”