For Hilton and his father, team owner Bobby Hilton, the crash turned what should have been another championship celebration into a 30-day scramble to build a replacement race car. It also forced them to confront something no racer particularly enjoys discussing: how close they came to losing everything.
The trouble actually started before the final round at Redding. Hilton had already experienced a right-rear tire failure earlier in eliminations, but the tire remained upright long enough for him to bring the dragster safely to a stop.
The team installed another set of tires and returned for the final against Kaiser. With an opportunity to secure the championship before Bakersfield, there was little reason to believe the afternoon would end with their race car destroyed.
Hilton lost traction around 300 feet into the run, pedaled the throttle and got back into the power. Near the finish line, the right-rear tire exploded, taking the wing with it and sending the dragster into a violent sequence of impacts.
“And then it blew the right rear tire, clean off the rim, exploded it, knocked the wing off, fricking drove it down the wall and then hit the Jersey wall and rolled it over a couple times and landed on its top,” Hilton said. “It was not a great experience, but yeah, that’s what happened at Redding.”
His father watched the situation deteriorate as the damaged dragster continued downtrack. The final blow came when the car struck an angled concrete barrier protecting a light pole, launching it into the air before it landed upside down.
For Bobby Hilton, the destruction of the car was one thing. What happened inside the cockpit was considerably more troubling.
The exploding tire apparently contacted the wing assembly, creating violent vibrations that shook Tyler’s head inside the roll cage. Both father and son immediately recognized the possible consequences.
“Yeah. And that ain’t good because that’s what killed Eric Medlen,” Tyler said. “It’s like that kind of deal.”
Medlen, an NHRA Funny Car driver, died in 2007 from injuries sustained during a testing accident at Gainesville, Florida. The comparison was particularly unsettling for the Hiltons because of the severe head movement Tyler experienced during the tire failure.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, 250 miles an hour and the car goes out of control, that’s not good,” Tyler said.
Despite the concussion and bruised ribs, Hilton credited the car’s safety equipment with preventing more serious injuries. His father has since made additional cockpit protection a priority for the replacement dragster.
“Yeah, I looked at the padding and that car was just a hair small for me,” Tyler said. “This new car’s got a bigger cage on it with more padding, which is good. So we looked at that. We looked at the belts. The belts did a really good job. I run two inch small Simpson or ESS belts. They worked right. I had bruised ribs. That’s all I got out of that.”