ESPN NHRA

ENGLISHTOWN, N.J. -- It is a most eerie and spine-tingling experience to watch something unfold before 30,000 drag racing fans that renders each and every one of them speechless.

And so it was as memorable a moment as ever witnessed in NHRA POWERade drag racing when on Sunday, Robert Hight, aboard his John Force-owned AAA Ford Mustang, rolled to the starting line in the opening round of eliminations at the 39th Lucas Oil SuperNationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park.

Scott Kalitta would have raced against Hight in the day's first matchup had the 46-year-old veteran driver not lost his life during a qualifying pass on Saturday. With the entire four-car Kalitta team -- including drivers, crew chiefs, mechanics, invited guests and Scott's father, Connie Kalitta -- standing at the starting line opposite Hight's machine, Robert staged his car, took the green light, and slowly idled down the drag strip in a heartfelt expression of his respect and admiration for his fellow racer and friend.

The sellout crowd stood speechless while applauding their approval as Hight's 8,000-horsepower race car made its run at headway speed.

"It was something my whole team talked about this morning," Hight said shortly thereafter. "We decided it was our way of paying our respects to Scott and his family and his team. We thought about how Scott might have wanted us to go out there and really get after it the way he always raced, and in some ways, it might have been just as fitting a tribute to him.

"But I think what we did was an even more appropriate way to show everyone the kind of respect we felt for him."

It was 12 years ago, at the 1996 Mac Tools U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis, when a similar tribute was offered to a driver who had been lost in a qualifying mishap during the event. Blaine Johnson was killed in his Top Fuel Dragster, tuned by his brother, Alan Johnson, on the pass that awarded him the No. 1 qualifying position. Blaine's first-round opponent would have been Tony Schumacher, a rookie at the time, driving for the Peek Brothers and making his first Top Fuel appearance at the sport's biggest race.

"I remember that day," said Schumacher, now a five-time POWERade champion and six-time U.S. Nationals titlist who, ironically, is now being tuned by Alan Johnson. "When I came to the starting line, I had every intention of making a full pass because that's what we believed Blaine would have wanted. I was really nervous and still shook after what had happened to Blaine, and when I staged, I reached over to engage both fuel pumps.

"They hung up and I wasn't sure if they were both turned on, so rather than risk making a pass under full power and maybe having the engine lean out and blow up, I took it as a sign to just idle down the track and not take any chances. The crowd obviously thought it was intentional and gave us a big round of applause, so maybe it really was the right thing to do."

Hight's tribute was carefully thought out and executed with great sensitivity and emotion. It was an extremely fitting and touching salute to Kalitta, a driver who had experienced an all-too-personal brush with the death of another driver in 2004. At that year's NHRA event in Madison, Ill., Darrell Russell was killed during Top Fuel eliminations when his race car went out of control and crashed. Kalitta was in the other lane.

The NHRA will race forward and continue to provide excitement and entertainment for the many thousands of fans who flock to national events and cheer the exploits of the sport's quickest and fastest personalities. But for a brief moment on a quarter-mile of asphalt and concrete in Englishtown, N.J., on a cloudy afternoon on the second full day of summer in 2008, a lone driver in a single car traveling no more than walking speed quietly said what many are still unable to express in words.

Thank you, Scott.

Bill Stephens covers the NHRA for ESPN.com.