Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

In round one of pro stock eliminations Paul Pittman would face number one qualifier Allen Johnson in a race that Pittman was a long shot to win. To have any chance at a round win he would need a lot of luck. He got some luck, unfortunately it was very bad luck. Continue on to see how this one ends up.

After getting close to the center line, Pittman would stay on the throttle and it proved to be costly.

The car would catch on the sticky rubber causing a seemingly slow (to me at least!) roll…

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

Allen Johnson was lucky to be so far ahead of Pittman at this point….

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

The last two pro stock crashes I shot were two years ago in Phoenix with Gordie Rivera and Vinnie Deceglie turning turtle, in both cases once they rolled over onto their roof the car slid to an easy stop with no impacts. I figured the same thing would happen with Pittman here…..

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

It didn’t. His Pontiac GXP would continue rolling. Note the pipes beneath his car shooting exhaust out, meaning the impact of the roll more than likely caused him to hit the gas….

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

The one full barrel roll he did was about as light of a flip as you could have in a drag racing crash but this thrill ride was far from over…

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

Pittman would make contact with the near lane wall. At this point I started to step off the wall since I wasn’t sure what was gonna happen next…

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

The car had stopped flipping and his parachutes weren’t out so I figured I was safe to continue shooting. By this point his car was too close for me to shoot with my 600mm so I did the quick shift from my 600mm to the D4 on my shoulder with a 70-200mm.

He hit the far lane wall directly across from my shooting position and the car caught on fire…

Nikon D4, 70-200mm, 500iso, f5.6, 1/3200th, Aperture Priority

With his steering obviously out at this point, Pittman would once again cross the track and nail the near lane was down past my position. This was the hardest impact of the crash by far in my opinion…

Nikon D4, 70-200mm, 500iso, f5.6, 1/4000th, Aperture Priority

The car would come to a stop with some flames coming from the front end.

Nikon D800, 600mm, 400iso, f8, 1/2000th, Manual

Due to the safety rules of the NHRA and the well built car by Paul Pittman himself, saved him from any injuries. Thats about as hard as a pro stocker can crash so everyone was relieved to see Paul would be ok.

This would be my first crash sequence with my Nikon D800. It has three times the quality of my previous cameras so I was able to zoom in a ton and still maintain quality. The downfall is instead of 10 frames a second I am reduced to 4 a second. I am very happy with the images so I won’t cry about the missing 25 or so shots I would have had with the D4 or D3s.

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