RIP Shelly Howard

[Infomaniac]

Shelly was killed last night testing her brand new A/Fuel dragster here at the Tulsa track. To compuund the tragedy she went over the wall and killed her son that was driving the tow vehicle. She was such a sweet person it will be a tremendous loss. My prayers to Doc Howard and the remainder of her family and friends.
We sponsor Shelly's car and they are the most terrific people you could imagine.
Article from NHRA (http://www.nhra.com/apcm/templates/news_template.asp?articleid=3703&zoneid=8)
http://moritzmachine.com/TRPTEMP.jpg

[pgf127rt]

Info, sorry to hear of the double tragedy, my condlences to the family and friends of Shelly and her son.

[rrrr]

A very sad occurrance. Anytime a brother or sister racer is taken, the whole racing world mourns.
Rest easy, Champ. Godspeed to the son also.

[VD CRUISER]

Man, thats hard to believe, I feel so bad for the rest of her family and friends. :(

[Infomaniac]

10 a.m. Wednesday April 6th
Nind Woodland Chapel
5757 S. Memorial
Tulsa, OK 74136
The family has asked in lieu of flowers donations be made to Racers For Christ in memory of Shelly and Special Olympics in memory of Brian.

[BLUBYU]

What a great tragedy. Probably would have been there had I known she was going to be testing but we went to the sprint car races instead. Glad we weren't there to witness it. Bless her family and friends. :(

[victorfb]

very very sad. my condolences to the family. we all know its a dangerous sport, and losing a racer is never acceptible. but to lose a young boy at the same time, now that hurts. my prayers go out to them.

[beyondhelpin]

Seen it on the news last night. Bad deal. My condolences to the family.

[Riverbums1]

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family & friends...........

[Infomaniac]

The funeral loction has changed to accomodate more people. . If you plan on attending I can give you the new locatio via PM or e-mail.

[Infomaniac]

The funeral loction has changed to accomodate more people. . If you plan on attending I can give you the new location via PM or e-mail.

[DEL51]

What a tragedy! God Bless her and her son.They are together, I am sure of that.

[Moneypitt]

Wow, what a terrible shame. To lose a racer, someone that is aware of the risks is always a tragedy, but the way this went down is bordering on unbelievable. My condolences to their family, and all that knew her and her son. Info, I know you share in the loss. On land and on the water, we are all brothers and sisters in the vast racing family..........Ray.......PS89
(BTW, Our local newspaper here in So Cal had an article about this accident.)

[Infomaniac]

I would imagine this is one of the worst drag racing accidents ever. It still amazes me that this could actually happen.
This is an eyewitness account posted on a local drag racing forum.:
First off let me say that I hesitated posting this on here so I sent this to Carl first and he felt that it would help people with closure, recognizing danger being close to the track and to help people understand what happened rather than trying to put together bits and pieces 3rd and 4th hand.
I did this write-up in responce to another message board that I frequent as they were trying to put the bit of news articles together to figure out what happened becuase the news wasn't very accurate or complete. So here is the write up I did to address that thread.
----------------------------------------------------
Shelly Howard lived here in Tulsa. Here husband is a doctor here in town. They haven't been down the Tulsa track in years because the facility was sub par and wouldn't have held the power. But just last year the track was purchased and several million dollars have been put into the track to make it a National Event level track. Mike Edwards, from the Tulsa area, V Gaines and a bunch of Comp Eliminator cars have been renting the track recently and they have proven that the new facility will hold the power. Mike Edwards matched his, I think #2, qualifying spot from Gainesville just a few weeks ago at the Tulsa facility. So the track has now been proven to be a good track for testing of the Pro class cars.
About week or 2 ago they had a small wreck in their TAD, no one was hurt and the car didn't roll or anything but she did brush the wall, I think it was pretty close to the starting line, but it did bend the chassis. The car from this past weekend was a brand new car and the first time it was taken to the track. They just finished putting it together at 4:30pm that day and they came out to do some testing.
First pass she picked the front end of the car up about 5 foot and set is down. The Second pass she made about a 300 foot pass and shut it off. I think she had some serious tire shake and eventually broke the tires loose.
The Third pass, I was in the fenced in area just behind the tower side lane and about 20 feet behind the burn out box. It's a spectator access area that allows the spectators to get close to the cars as they pull into the burn out box or in a Pro car situation to watch them start up the motors. So we were about 10 feet to the side of the crew car, Saturn Stationwagon, and about 15 feet from the TAD as they were starting it.
It was getting real cool so they had the intake and injector lines covered with a blanket. They took it off and handed it to Shelly's son, he pulled it into the back seat of the car and made room for the rest of crew once they were ready to go down track. So he was in the back seat holding the blanket, I can't confirm this and it really doesn't matter but someone told me that he was mentally handicapped but still helped out the crew.
She launched hard and went straight, all the candles lit and looked to be on a low 5 sec, 270mph pass, when somewhere between the 1/8 and 1000 ft mark the front end of the car caught some air and it did a blow over landing on it's top and slid through the finish line. The clocks showed 6.53 at 115mph. So she was on a fast pass.
I wasn't able to tell what happened after she landed on her top because of all the smoke, sparks and flames. I just assumed she was barrel rolling but when she finally stopped her down track movement she was about 500 foot pass the finish line she ended right side up, and that make some sense because the wing and the motor would keep it from landing up side down and the low center of gravity would try to make the car end up right side up.
We could still hear the motor running but it sounded as if it was flooding over and fouling out plugs and was about to die. But then it started clearing up and picking up RPM. At this time most of us just thought that she was in the car on it's side and on fire because we could see fire, a few of her crew actually started to run down the track, they only made it to about the Christmas tree. When all of a sudden we hear the motor go to WOT (wide open throttle) fire coming out of the headers. It was an injection motor not a blower and I think they run like 50% nitro so it was lit up. We still didn't realize that the car was rolling. I actually thought the motor had broken free from the car and was just about to explode (I know that doesn't make any sense but that's what came to my mind).
About that time we could see that something was headed back this way but from the smoke we couldn't tell exactly what was going on (who would ever in their right mind think the the car would be heading back down the track). Everyone just stopped and watched trying to figure out what was going on when all of a sudden everyone realized. It was up right and heading back down the track in the same lane it went down in and was at WOT, nitro flames coming out of header just like they were when she left. We kept thinking that it would hit the wall, go over and stop but it didn't.
We actually don't think it hit the wall until around the 100 foot mark. So it was on a straight on pass WOT. I waited until the car got to the 60 foot mark when everyone started running for their lives, it was just over 100foot from where we were standing. We had started moving behind the tower thinking that would protect us but then we thought otherwise and started running. We could actually see the car through the tower because the front and the side are glass so we were for the most part protected from the car and were still watching it come.
The car still at full throttle brushed off the wall, which just straightened it up and hit their crew car at what had to be 250mph plus, head on. It was on the left side of the tower lane. It and the dragster just disintegrated and went thru the retaining wall which was about 30 foot past where the crew car was parked. Her son was apparently still in the car, but there probably wasn't enough time to get out once everyone knew the car was coming back at us. The dragster and the car ended up about 20 foot past the retaining wall. So the impact of the car and the retaining the wall stopped a 250mph dragster within 50 - 70 feet, that in itself was amazing.
The retaining wall did have about a 10 inch I-beam and it was laid over and the metal siding was gone. It appeared that the pit car flew over the wall and the dragster went threw the wall.
Myself and one other guy ran down into the wreckage and I stopped once I got close to the fires fearing that it was about to explode, many fires were going, but the other guys went another 15 foot looking for the driver compartment.
About that time the officials and the crew got there so I backed off and looked at the wreckage.
It was dark but I couldn't recognize anything, just scrapes of metal everywhere. It was a horrifying experience and I left shortly after.
Out of respect for the family and friends I won't go into any other details.
The odds of all the combined things that happened to end up like this are mind boggling. I can't imagine what the family, friends and crew are going through. Neither my wife or I could sleep that night, it just kept playing over and over and over again in our heads. The fenced in area where I stood and watched it all until the car was about at the 60foot mark was destroyed, that way to close for me and think about how lucky I was and spent the next few days appreciating life...
As we were running from the fenced in area and as the dragster hit the crew car parts were hitting us in the back of the head and then part were falling from the sky, it was crazy.

[Seadog]

The World had a major write-up on this with diagrams. I don't think I have ever heard of a tragedy like this before. My wishes are with the family.

[Moneypitt]

Wow............... :(

[Keith]

I read the news here, so sad. I almost sent the first hand description (above) to my freind, but decided not to.he has a 60's FED with a big block, Birdcatcher on alky/nitro mix. We are very anal about safety (as everyone should be), I am afraid that the decription would spook Terry. A WOT car heading in the wrong direction after flipping is one of the wildest things that ever happend in motorsports. Shelly will be missed by the fans and racers alike. Thanks Infomaniac for passing the news.

[Taylorman]

I went to the races in Hoston today and there was alot of talk about it. I think this car was from Tulsa and had I Memory of Shelly on the side.
http://www2.***boat.com/image_center/data/500/161DCP_4817.JPG

[Seadog]

The World reported that they had completed the IHRA report. They said the black box was too badly damaged to help. It was believed she was knocked out by the flip and either had her foot on the throttle or it jammed. They have changes on study, and it looks like there will be some type of Dead-Man switch proposed for the future.

[Infomaniac]

The World reported that they had completed the IHRA report. They said the black box was too badly damaged to help. It was believed she was knocked out by the flip and either had her foot on the throttle or it jammed. They have changes on study, and it looks like there will be some type of Dead-Man switch proposed for the future.
The mosnter truck switch is really not necessary in drag racing. They put an extra ordinary amount of fuel in the car to keep the front end down. There are other ways of adding weight in any other circumstance other than testing a new car. Limiting fuel capacity is the easiest fix for preventing another occurrence like this.

[Seadog]

Could be. My hands-on race days are long behind me and I was more into the racing at Hallett. I was just reporting what I got from the paper. Whatever the changes, it will always be a sport that can be disasterous when things go wrong.