“I was only conscious for the first three rolls,” Andrew Nelson recalls. “I felt the car go over the first time, which was a relatively soft roll. Then, when it grabbed the track, it started to violently roll. On the third flip, I was knocked out.”
As the car tumbled, Andrew faced more peril: The fuel cell leaked and started …
What Went Wrong?
The Nelson family–Andrew, his son Calvin and wife, Paula–are seasoned car builders. They turned a 1959 Volvo PV544 into a barely street-legal drag car: 9-inch rear end, Turbo 400 transmission and a Vortec 4200 straight-six that puts 577 horsepower to the rear wheels. The driver was surrounded by a cage rated for 6.5-second runs.
“We went to make a pass, and as we were getting to the top end, the car ran a 9.12 at 149.27 mph,” Andrew recalls. “The cylinder sleeve broke on number two. It kicked a connecting rod out so hard that it blew a half-foot-by-half-foot chunk of the block out. We are convinced, based on the evidence, that a piece of the engine went through the back tire and caused the car to go out of control.”
Andrew tried to reach for his parachute release but couldn’t grab it in time. “Being that this is a drag-and-drive car, we put the parachute release up near the halo bar, which is common for a lot of folks,” Andrew explains, “but I normally mount mine right next to the shifter. Because I had a handle up in the top of the cage, I had to reach for it. That’s what caused my arm to become so injured–it was flailing about as the car was tumbling.”
Once the crash began, Andrew couldn’t do much.
Beaten and Battered
In the hospital, the medical team assessed the injuries that Andrew incurred. Most of the damage affected the right side of his body:
Four broken ribs.
Fractured L3 vertebra.
Severely bruised hip bone.
Bruised lung.
Dislocated shoulder.
Three torn muscles in relation to the rotator cuff.
Bruised arm, below the shoulder.
Two black eyes.
The nerves surrounding the eyes were so swollen, Andrew couldn’t…
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