{"id":81877,"date":"2021-10-26T17:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=81877"},"modified":"2021-10-26T17:01:00","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T00:01:00","slug":"rip-dylan-cromwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/rip-dylan-cromwell\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP Dylan Cromwell"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: Will Lester Photography<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019re always told that racing is a dangerous sport, but we expect those dangers to occur on the track, not on the highways. Yet sometimes the tragedies we least expect occur where we least expect them to happen.<\/p>\n

This past Sunday morning, Head Racing was beginning its trek to the West Coast in order for racer Blake Alexander to compete in the NHRA\u2019s penultimate competition at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the intent of continuing through to Pomona for the season finale. Alexander had qualified the team\u2019s Ford Mustang Funny Car in the Countdown to the Championship and hopes were high that he would move forward in the standings.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, fate stepped into those plans when, on a slick I-70 highway, one of the transporters, driven by crew member Dylan Cromwell, 23, was destroyed in an accident near Plainfield, west of Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

There were three semi-trucks involved, together with a single passenger vehicle. One of the large trucks lost control in one of many I-70 construction areas (it\u2019s said that Indiana has two seasons: construction cones and snow plows) and crashed into a concrete barrier, hitting the Head tractor-trailer head-on and killing Cromwell.<\/p>\n

A rising, talented and dedicated member of the NHRA community, Cromwell always wanted to be a racing mechanic, and initially set his sights on moving from his hometown of Scobie, Montana to work in NASCAR. He went to North Carolina to train at NASCAR\u2019s technical institute, but an opportunity to work with Jim Head\u2019s NHRA team beckoned, and in 2018 Cromwell relocated again, to the Columbus, Ohio area. He\u2019s been a crew member with Head ever since, initially servicing the car when Jonnie Lindberg was the driver, and later with Alexander.<\/p>\n

Cromwell may have been young, but he was a valued member of the drag racing community. When news of his death began to circulate, among the first to note his passing was Funny Car driver (and current points leader, Ron Capps of Don Schumacher Racing. He recalled meeting Cromwell\u2019s parents at a sponsor appearance – they\u2019d driven more than two hours to meet Capps – and noted, \u201cThey told me their son had achieved his dream of working on an NHRA nitro Funny Car team\u2026 our thoughts are with the Cromwell family,\u201d Capps said.<\/p>\n

Mike Lewis, senior VP at DSR, a racer and former track executive recalled, \u201cDylan loved our sport and had a promising career ahead of him. He earned the trust of car owner Jim Head and was driving Head\u2019s race trailer to Las Vegas.. my prayers go out to Dylan\u2019s family, his many friends and to everyone affiliated with Jim Head and his team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other teams in the NHRA community moved to note, \u201cOur deepest sympathy and condolences go out to the Cromwell, family, Head Racing and the NHRA community during these incredibly difficult times,\u201d said Kalitta Motorsports. \u201cThis is heartbreaking,\u201d noted Just Ashley, currently third in Top Fuel points. \u201cThoughts and prayers with his loved ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

NHRA announcer Alan Reinhart stated, \u201cThis is beyond awful. A young man living his dream on a professional race team. Just getting started. The #BrotherhoodOfRacing is in mourning today.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is just the most recent road accident that has killed a member of the NHRA family. Last October Cruz Pedregon\u2019s crew chief, Eric \u201cHopsing\u201d Lane was killed in a fluke accident in Texas while the team was taking an off-day between races.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re always told that racing is a dangerous sport, but we expect those dangers to occur on the track, not on the highways. Yet sometimes the tragedies we least expect occur where we least expect them to happen.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":81878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3470],"tags":[5614,8670,41,1632],"class_list":["post-81877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-anne-proffit","tag-dylan-cromwell","tag-news","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/dylan-e1635290830421.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-liB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81879,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81877\/revisions\/81879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}