There are crashes, there are accidents, and then there are WTF moments like this one. The first time we watched the video, we wondered if this Firebird was being piloted by remote-control, since you can barely see the driver, who is set well back over the rear end housing out of view. Of course, it doesn’t really matter where the driver is placed when he can’t control the car.

The video starts out innocently enough, with a far-off burnout in the sights of the camera, but immediately upon hammer-down, it becomes evident that something just isn’t going to go right. As soon as the car is through the burnout box, it immediately hooks left, and you think “uh-oh.”

We’ve seen cars hit the tree before, but this accident is on another level – the car crosses into the center of the track, strikes the signage wall in the center, and is up on two wheels before it even gets to the tree – and then comes the “how did that even happen?!?” Press play on the video below (our apologies for the NSFW language in the title).

Up on two wheels, the car flips into the christmas tree and proceeds to break the body — if not the chassis as well — into two pieces, with the roof completely caving in. Unfortunately, at that point the video ends, so we don’t get to see the aftermath or whether the driver is even OK, but from the looks of it the damage was confined to the area in front of where the driver should be sitting. 

While we can’t speak for the construction of the chassis – or whether it did in fact break in this incident — the body itself, without a lot of structural support around the roof area (even less than modern Funny Car bodies if we had to guess) would be a given to break in such an impact, with the roll cage providing the safety for the driver. 

We have to guess this isn’t how this racer expected his day to go.