That’s not what cars are supposed to do. There are quite a few things that go wrong with a car, and when it’s a seriously muscled up drag car, many of those things can lead to horrific problems. Take the following story of Jerry Yoeman. His Corvette drag car was apparently having some electrical issues, leading to an RPM spike which blew up the transmission cooler. The resulting spray of transmission fluid all over everything is what caused the explosion you’ll see here.
Yoeman suffered only minor burns and some smoke inhalation, something of a miracle considering the ferocity of the fire.