After a funny car's body flew into the crowd earlier this year they mandated a system that would tether the body in case of an engine explosion. Several teams including Johnny Gray said that the way they wanted it done was a very bad idea. Sunday proved that in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEByM7pwaHM&feature=youtu.be

Interesting is that the shoots didnt deploy. And no one talked about that.

I guess the body flapping in the wind made it a parachute in itself.

I can't imagine not being able to see a mid track. It could have been really bad if it blew at the top end and the car crossed into the other lane.

Here's his side of the story, seems like this was not such a great idea, and I wasn't aware of the fire issue and didn't really consider that part of it.

"The body did not come off the car. It blew the body up and the tethers yanked the body right back down. But the problem is, it blew the fire-wall up over the windshield. The body didn't come back down square on the go round. We had a nice gap in there, so we had fire coming in under the body and the fire wall was up over the windshield on the car so I couldn't see where I was going. Something hit my right arm pretty hard. I finally got stuff out of the way enough to get to the brake handle and start getting the car shut down, but I had no idea where I was going. It finally eased over and tagged the wall on the right side. I tried to just pull it off the wall a little bit and get it to come to a stop. NHRA arrived on the scene, and luckily the fire was pretty much out. They cut the tethers and started trying to get stuff off the car."

Can't fix stupid....

I appreciate what the NHRA has done over the years in the aspect of safty but,,, I think they have lost their grip on reality, keep it up and they are going to safty themselves right out of bussiness, it's a sport fella's there is always going to be some element of danger.

Hopefully no drivers get burned from being encapsulated: that would have been my first consideration if I was NHRA. Generally anything that blows a FC body off is accompanied by a pretty substantial fire.

And concussion
There also needs to be someplace for the blast to escape. Burst panels on the side of the body instead of that cable rigging.

I thought about side burst panels when they were talking about it during the broadcast: I'd be worried about the sideways force - it's obviously significant - affecting the car in the other lane, or ricocheting off the wall & steering the damaged car. We've all seen how just having a hole out steers the car; now imagine a sudden and huge sideways input at half-track or so.
Seems to me a larger burst panel in the "hood" area would be better.

they really need to perform some type of rational testing before they just automatically implement these types of rules....

Rickster

NHRA is the one trying not to getting burnt....by the insurance company. I'm sure behind closed doors this is the real reason for all these new rules, but it sounds like they care for the racers. I would like to see the premium payment for each race.