Street Outlaws racer Chris Gordon killed at Ohio drag strip

Chris 'Block' Gordon, a 55-year-old drag racer and star of Discovery's reality series Street Outlaws: Fastest in America, died Saturday night, Aug. 22, after a crash during racing at KD Motorsports Park in South Webster, Ohio.

KD Motorsports Park confirmed the death in a Facebook post on Sunday morning, Aug. 23, a night after telling fans that a crash had cut the rest of Saturday's racing short. Track staff, firefighters, EMTs and medically trained bystanders reached him immediately and, the park said, 'exhausted all of their efforts at the time of the accident.' He was taken to a local hospital and pronounced dead that same night.

What caused the crash has not been made public. The Scioto County Sheriff's Office is investigating, and it remains unclear whether a mechanical failure, a loss of control behind the wheel or something else set off the wreck, which cut the rest of Saturday's program short.

What the track said

The park's Sunday statement called the wreck a 'terrible incident' and described Gordon as 'an absolute legend of our sport.' It asked fans to keep his wife and family, along with the medical staff, firefighters and emergency workers who responded, in their thoughts and prayers as the racing community tried to absorb the loss.

As most of you know by now, we had a devastating accident last night at the track involving our great friend and fellow racer, Chris Block Gordon.

The statement also asked people to hold back on rumor: 'Please for all involved let's keep speculation and uninformed opinions to a minimum as we pray for his family.'

Gordon had posted about the race on his own Facebook page only hours earlier. 'It's race day at the Hill Drivers meeting @ 6:15. Let's get busy,' he wrote, using the nickname regulars give the track. The page has since filled with tributes from family members, friends and fans who followed him on television.

The emergency response

The South Webster-Bloom Township Fire Department received the call at 8:05 p.m. Saturday, according to WSAZ, and crews reached KD Motorsports Park minutes later.

Assistant Fire Chief Jay Stewart described a scene far graver than a routine spin into a wall. 'It was a very fast response due to the seriousness of the crash. This was not just a drag car hitting a wall and the driver is getting out. It's more serious,' he told WSAZ.

Gordon was transported to Southern Ohio Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, the Scioto County Sheriff's Office told WOWK 13 News. The initial call had come in around 8 p.m., the sheriff's office said, and firefighters, emergency medical technicians and track staff had all responded at once.

The Portsmouth Daily Times reported that a representative of KD Motorsports Park and an official with the Scioto County Sheriff's Office both declined to comment further on what happened or on the exact cause of the wreck.

The strip runs one-eighth of a mile just north of the Village of South Webster, off Ohio State Route 140, according to the Herald-Dispatch. Racers know it as 'the Hill,' the drag racing outlet Backfire News reported, a nod to the hill built into the racing surface that sets it apart from the flat, straight tracks the sport usually uses.

Gordon raced out of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, where he built Block Motorsports. He grew up watching his father, a grudge racer, compete at local tracks, according to Dragzine, long before he broke onto the national scene as one of the team leaders on Street Outlaws.

Who Block Gordon was

On Street Outlaws: Fastest in America, Gordon led Team South Carolina, one of eight teams that compete for a $100,000 prize. In the show's second season he took a group of South Carolina drivers to Wyoming to race competitors drawn from 11 states across the country, and he was known throughout for the state he represented.

His car was a 1979 Ford Fairmont nicknamed 'Mayhem,' built for the small-tire class, cars that run skinny radial tires instead of the wide slicks used elsewhere. That choice, Backfire News reported, makes them dramatically harder to keep pointed straight under full power, one of the details that defined how Gordon raced.

On the show, Gordon built a reputation as a fierce competitor and scored a decisive win for his team. Fellow racers described him as someone who could light up any room he walked into and, above all, had a heart of gold, according to Dragzine.

News of his death drew tributes across the racing and Street Outlaws communities over the weekend, with fans and fellow drivers posting remembrances online.

Racing on the Hill

KD Motorsports Park is not sanctioned by the NHRA or IHRA, Backfire News reported, which means safety equipment requirements, track preparation standards and on-site medical response are set by the promoter rather than a national body. Those calls vary from one privately owned track to the next.

No-prep events skip the traction compound that sanctioned tracks lay down to bond tires to the pavement. Strips are normally built flat and dead straight so that a car's weight transfer and steering stay predictable from start to finish. The hill removes that, forcing a driver to manage a chassis compressing and unloading its suspension while trying to find grip on a surface with none added.

At a national event a sanctioning body sets those requirements. At a privately owned outlaw or bracket track they fall to the venue. What KD Motorsports Park required of drivers and cars on Saturday, and whether any of it bore on the crash, has not been established publicly.

The park has not said whether it will resume its normal event schedule, and no cause of the crash had been made public as of Tuesday.

What comes next

The Scioto County Sheriff's Office investigation remained open as of Tuesday. Whether the crash stemmed from the car, the track surface or a loss of control by the driver had not been determined, and the agencies that responded have said little beyond confirming his death.

Gordon's death left the drag racing world mourning one of its most recognizable figures, a driver whose father had raced before him and whose own turn on national television made him a familiar face far beyond the eighth-mile strips of Ohio and the Carolinas where he spent his career.

For now, the strip that Gordon wrote about on race morning sits at the center of an open investigation with no public conclusion, and the park that called him a legend of the sport has yet to say when its cars will run again.