Guilty as charged.
Tony Schumacher takes the green light in first round qualifying at the NHRA CarQuest Nationals in Chandler, AZ on February 26. 0.8 seconds after I took that shot he was 60' down the track, and 3 seconds after that he was crossing the finish line at the 1000' mark doing a touch over 322mph.
Also visible in the photograph, right under the "F" of Ford in the black and yellow shirt is NHRA official starter Mark Lyle. One month later, on March 27, Mr. Lyle lost his life while vacationing in Mexico on his birthday. He tried to rescue a drowning man and drowned himself. I went back through hundreds of photographs from the past few years trying to find a good one of him before I decided that this one IS a good one. It's what he was. The fury of a top fuel dragster, the nitro fumes and heat billowing up, the people all around, they were a part of Mark Lyle. So this one is for him.