unday, September 10, the weather was excellent for drag racing at Luskville, Quebec. No humidity, no wind, and the racers were cutting good lights and running straight and true. Russell Leafe was having one of his best racing days of the year until something went very wrong with his car.

He had beat all comers in the purple roadster-style car him and his brother, Dan–the other Leafe in Leafe Bros. Racing–had bought a couple years back and named, ‘Pandemonium.’

The name refers to the sound that banshees make once loosened from the gates of Hell.

It’s the sound of a huge eight-cylinder engine, with a little fibreglass body attached, as it hurls itself from the starting line and howls the quarter mile.

The Leafes, from Massena, N.Y, were regulars at Luskville. In fact, track operator, Arnie Malcolm, says he can’t remember a time that they hadn’t been there, usually a couple Sundays each month, to test their mettle against 30 racers who also call Luskville their home track.

A couple years back, when Luskville celebrated its 25th anniversary, Russell presented Arnie with a card that read, “To the best track in the world, Luskville.”

Arnie’s voice caught when he recalled this moment. He added, “We lost a good friend on Sunday.”

It’s hard to say what went wrong mid-afternoon on that beautiful fall day. The car was a front-runner, incredibly fast, dialling in the mid-8s, hitting 155 mph before the chute deployed.

It appears that a mechanical failure caused the clouds of white smoke which obliterated the disaster that followed.

Nothing slowed the car once it started to violently swerve. Perhaps a tire caught the edge of the track, or the brakes locked, which caused it to somersault over and over until it abruptly stopped, right-side up, in the grass beside the track.

By this time, the engine and transmission were all but removed from the frame. Mercifully, there wasn’t a fire.

It becomes old hat, but people who don fire suits and helmets and who strap themselves into a steel roll cage know that they do these things for a reason. It’s not like going for a ride at the Exhibition. There’s a real risk here, but that can be part of the thrill.

The reason for all of the safety equipment was never more apparent than during this accident, when it looked like Russell Leafe might walk away from this terrible wreck.

The roll cage was intact and his harness held. But somehow, the force that wreaked such destruction on the engine and transmission vented its fury on the fragile human cargo, too.

We are just not made to withstand such an assault. So it was for Russell Leafe.

This was probably going to be the last time this season that he and Dan would have been at Luskville. Up until the accident, the day had been fantastic for them. They had made it to the final race in the Super Pro division and were within seconds of winning. The car they were up against, Carl Jessup’s ‘Stress Reliever’ was one the Leafes had sold to Renfrew’s Jessup a few years back.

It was going to be a sweet victory.