Darrell Russell was killed in a violent crash during the Sears Craftsman Nationals, an event in which he had set the best qualifying time. Russell, running in the left-hand lane, had lost to Scott Kalitta in the final pairing of the Top Fuel quarterfinal round - equivalent to the second round of eliminations - when his car went out of control just past the finish line. Whilst running at approximately 483 km/h (300 mi/h), the vehicle suffered a mechanical failure, described by witnesses as "something exploding at the rear of his car [...] perhaps a tire shred", just as Russell pulled the parachute to slow down his 2,200-pound car. The NHRA electronic timing system showed that his nitromethane-powered car, powered by an engine producing up to 8,000 horsepower, had averaged 322.73 mi/h (519.29 km/h) in the final sixty-six feet of his run down the dragstrip. After the failure the car went sideways and hit the left wall backwards. The car rapidly disintegrated and began to move over into Kalitta's lane but the two vehicles did not collide. Russell’s car caught fire, but it was quickly extinguished by the NHRA Safety Safari team. The accident occurred at 18h30, local time.

As reported by Dan Brickey, NHRA Director of Emergency Medical Services, Russell's driver's compartment was intact when the rescue team arrived. Brickey said that Russell was unconscious but breathing when he was taken to a helicopter waiting on a landing pad inside the adjacent oval track at the Gateway International Raceway complex. Transported in critical condition to the St. Louis University Hospital, Russell succumbed to his injuries less than two hours later. Graham Light, NHRA Senior Vice President of Racing Operations, informed that the recovered parts of Russell's dragster were impounded and would be examined by the NHRA technical staff before being returned to team owner Joe Amato. The results of these investigations are unknown. Russell, who was a member of the Joe Amato Racing team, was the first racer to be killed at an NHRA national event since Blaine Johnson died in a crash during a qualifying run at the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis in 1996. After a forty-five minute stop to clean the strip, the Sears Craftsman Nationals continued after Russell’s accident, and no announcement was made to the some twenty-five thousand spectators.

R.I.P