During the second round of eliminations of the NHRA Arizona Nationals, living legend John Force would suffer a massive engine explosion before losing control and crashing with opponent Jonnie Lindberg. Continue on to see all the shots from this breathtaking incident.

My favorite thing about the NHRA race in Phoenix (besides being able to sleep in my own bed every night) is the bridge that goes across the track in the shutdown area.

Its an incredibly unique vantage point that provides the only view like this to shoot 330mph nitro cars in the world!

Ok lets get to the run.

In this first shot you can see all the white liquid coming from the right side exhaust which is indicative of cylinder(s) being out. That makes 11 thousand horsepower engines VERY unhappy.

But on race day you don’t lift. Force will wish he had.

The force of the explosion lifted the body until it ripped the body right off the dual body latches.

The 300mph air quickly did its thing and lifted the carbon fiber body off the chassis.

With the body clear of the car the fire typically goes away. Not this time.

In the next two shots you can see the parachutes being pulled from the airborne body.

The back half of the cars body would head skyward out of my frame (before coming down and hitting my remote camera)

The way the body shredded from the car appeared to mess with the steering of the car.

Watch the piece of the body on the front tire in the next couple shots as it goes under the front wheel further eliminating the champs ability to steer.

The engine fire still burned in the face of Force as the momentum from the explosion takes him across the center line.

Without the cars body, downforce is essentially gone and Force would continue bouncing towards the right lane wall.

At this point Jonnie Lindberg probably realizes he is about to join in John Forces bad day.

Now the bouncing car of Force is totally blocking the track in front of Lindberg.

Impact is imminent.

Force makes hard contact with the right lane wall as Lindberg drives into his parachutes.

The impact with the wall would send the rear end of the car about three feet into the air.

Jonnie Lindberg would slam into the airborne rear end of Forces car sending Johns rear Goodyear tire through his front windshield.

The impact would send Forces car up into the air on its side.

Note his arm coming out of the cockpit of the car as he rides out the crash.

At this point, the cars are way too close for me to be shooting with my 600mm lens but there was just no time to switch to the 200mm.

Here is the last photo (uncropped) before the two cars went beneath the bridge I was shooting from.

Its hard to do a 360 degree spin when you’re standing on a ladder facing the starting line but I would eventually find the crashing cars and continue shooting.

The gorgeous new Head Racing body flies off Jonnie Lindbergs car as he and Force get tangled together once again.

I followed the body for a few shots before getting back to shooting the two out of control cars.

John Force slides across the track.

Jonnie Lindberg (left) hits the wall in front of John Force.

The last impact would spin Lindberg around.

Then John Force would hit the left lane wall.

Forces parachute would come to a rest covering the cockpit of Lindbergs car.

The body from Lindbergs car would come to a rest on top of the right lane wall.

Lindberg would quickly climb from his car uninjured.

As is typical with crashes, the Safety Safari would direct Lindberg away from Forces car.

Lindberg would walk back to the pits.

As safety crews would tend to John.

John Force would be alert and talking to the Safety Safari before being transported to a local hospital to be checked out and released a couple hours later.

After the crash I would take the walk a quarter mile towards the starting line to check and see if the remote camera I had set up in the morning had gotten photos.

Here is what the camera looked like when I set it up a few hours earlier.

And here is what it looked like when I got to it after the back half of John Forces Chevrolet body flew over the wall and took out my remote camera!

Thankfully the card, camera and lens survived.

The camera setup was a Canon 1Dx with a 100-400mm lens set at 180mm with an F stop of f9 for good depth of field set at a ridiculously high for daytime shooting iso of 3200 so I could maintain the maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second.

Here is the last shot as the body comes down in front of the camera.

This crash would be the third crash suffered by John Force Racing cars in the last three weeks!

Here are the previous two:

John Force Pomona Explosion

Brittany Force Pomona Crash

Hopefully JFR has all their bad luck out of the way and can get back to normal!

If you’d like to help me pay for my remote camera repairs feel free to order a high quality print of any shots contained in this post by CLICKING HERE