The annual March Meet at the Auto Club Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California, once known as the U.S. Fuel and Gas Championships, has been a regular part of the drag racing schedule since 1959, and 54 years later, it remains one of the most exciting events held all season long. Unfortunately, when you bring together such a collection of wild and high horsepower machines, things can also get exciting for all the wrong reasons, as a number of racers experienced during last weekend’s old school reunion in the desert.

The weekend got off to an auspicious beginning on Thursday when Roger Garten, driving the Tocco & Garten “War Horse” Mustang went up in a blaze of glory near the finish stripe, sending the nostalgic body sailing into the air and sending debris scattering. The NitroAmerica film crew, with what appears to have been a GoPro camera mounted on the retaining wall, captured an excellent angle as Garten’s machine bounced on two wheels across the stripe.

Then Mark Sanders, driving the “Mr. Explosive” 1970 Nova, had his mount take a hard right turn into the guardrail, the impact shifting the body onto the injector butterflies and sending Sanders bouncing off the guardrail again before running off the end of the Bakersfield strip. Despite the scary ride, Sanders was transported to a local hospital for evaluation and was back in attendance as a Spectator for fuel qualifying on Saturday.

Finally, Nostalgia Top Fuel racer Denver Schutz, in his “Raisin Express 2” dragster, encountered heavy tire shake during Friday qualifying that sent his machine out of the groove. In an effort to not drift over into his opponents lane, Schutz corrected back into his lane, got up onto two wheels, and slapped the left lane guardrail. Like Sanders, Schutz was transported for evaluation and released.

Things happen and they happen fast at 250 MPH, but these men and women continue to strap on their helmets to entertain us, and we hope to see each of these three teams back out on the track soon.