(Steve Engel's Pro Mod Corvette at Gainesville, FL, earlier this year).
There’s been another death in National Hot Rod Association drag racing, the third in just over a year. It’s received scant media coverage, though, and we think one reason for that is because racer Steve Engel, 49, did not compete in one of NHRA’s “professional” classes, but was what’s known generically as a “sportsman” racer, an amateur, his racing a hobby, not livelihood.
While there are perhaps 100 racers in those four professional classes, there are many thousands of sportsman racers across the US and abroad.
Pro Modified racer Engel died at 5 pm on Sunday, September 14, in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. Engel had been involved in a serious racing accident during the recent 54th annual Mac Tools US Nationals at O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, which ran from August 27 through September 1.
Funny Car driver Eric Medlen was 33 when he was killed in March of 2007 while testing his car at a Florida track; he drove for John Force, whose team is the most successful in the history of the sport. Scott Kalitta, 46 when he died, one of the few drivers victorious in both of NHRA’s fastest and most-dangerous classes, Top Fuel and Funny Car, was killed at Englishtown, NJ, on June 22 of this year, when his Funny Car exploded and went out of control towards the end of the ¼-mile track.
And John Force, the winningest driver in NHRA history and the sport’s best-known public face, was seriously injured when he crashed at the 2007 O'Reilly NHRA Fall Nationals in Ennis, TX. His injuries kept him out of his Funny Car for several weeks, and many in the sport hoped that following Medlen’s death and now his own serious accident, Force, 59, would finally retire from racing and spend his time overseeing his large race team. After making a substantial physical recovery, though, Force got back into his under-5 second, 330-mile per hour Ford Mustang replica Funny Car.
Death was a near-constant in motor racing in the years leading up to WWII, and even in the post-war years of 
the 1950s through the ‘90s, racers knew that their sport could very well lead to serious injury and even death.
In recent years, though, in motorsports ranging from Formula One to NASCAR to IndyCar and most other major racing series around the world, injuries and deaths have become the exception, not the rule. This is thanks to drivers in better physical shape than those in past years, but especially to new technologies and rules which dictate making race cars and driver protective equipment as safe as possible. Drivers today often walk away from wrecks which a decade ago probably would have left them critically injured or dead.
(Steve Engel, 49, leaves a wife and two sons; drag racing was his hobby and not a source of income).
Click below for more on the spate of recent deaths in NHRA drag racing and how other series have lowered injury and death rates.
Pro Modified race cars in the Jegs series are somewhat similar to those in the sport’s professional Funny Car series. The cars have bodies made of fiberglass and other lightweight materials, though they often mimic past “classics”; Engel’s car looked like a 1963 Chevrolet Corvette. They are also “door-slammers,” meaning doors on the race car must open and close. (In June, Scott Kalitta was killed by this explosion of his Funny Car's engine and subsequent crash).
Pro Mod cars can augment their V8 engine horsepower with superchargers, turbochargers or nitrous oxide. They use gasoline, so do not exhibit the enormous boost in horsepower and speed which Funny Cars get from adding nitromethane to their fuel. Pro Mods take a tick over six seconds to cover the standard ¼-mile NHRA race track, at speeds approaching 240 miles per hour.
These are not toys; they are serious, purpose-built race cars, little related, if at all, to cars found in a dealer showroom.
Journalist Dave Wallace has covered the sport for 30 years and told us the costs of building a competitive Pro Mod ranges from $150,000 to $200,000. Apart from the Pro Mod cars which use nitrous oxide, replacement engine parts, which take-up the lion’s share of a team’s budget over a season of racing, are much less expensive than those used in supercharged cars which run on alcohol or nitro-powered race cars. Still, Pro Mods are nearly as sophisticated as race cars in NHRA’s professional-level Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock classes.
Wallace also said that, “most fans consider Pro Mod to be a professional class, even if NHRA doesn't.”
Also, like Funny Cars and Pro Stock cars, the Pro Mods have their engines in front of the driver, which 
many believe makes them more dangerous in the event of an engine explosion, a fairly common occurrence. (Engel campaigned his 1963 Chevy Corvette replica in the NHRA's Jegs ProMod Series).
Engel’s sudden death last Sunday came as a shock to his family, friends and his doctors.
Steve Engel owned a trucking company and a trailer manufacturing firm. His self-sponsored “Diamond Heavy Haul” Corvette went out of control near the end of the Indianapolis track, and hit a retaining wall head-on. He was airlifted to Methodist Hospital where doctors discovered six broken vertebrae in his back. Two were fixed immediately, but after excess fluid developed in his lungs, doctors waited until Friday to fix the other four. His physicians were diagnosing a long but full recovery.
The 49-year-old Engel is survived by his wife, Tonya, and sons Stevie and Michael. A resident of Shandon, Ohio, Engel competed in 31 Jegs ProMod Challenge events in the past several years. He had one win and two runner-up finishes on his resume. Overall, Engel had been drag racing for 21 years, and listed John Force as the racer he most admired.
Can anyone tell me the number Sportsman and Pro-mod driver that needed to go to the hospital for injuries received while racing?
Posted by: John G | October 05, 2008 at 04:17 PM