Eric Medlen - Legacy

Legacy

Infineon Raceway holds the Eric Medlen Ice Cream Social with fans and competitors being able to have ice cream after the final round of qualifying during the track's NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series race. Medlen mentioned that a person can never be unhappy when eating ice cream. The benefit helps local racers in the San Francisco Bay area who race at Infineon toward a scholarship fund.

One major legacy that was left behind by Medlen happened after his death, the NHRA enacted a new safety requirement within the Funny Car division, that states that the roll bars within the car now have to be padded. The roll bars are padded with a heavy foam rubber insulation and wrapped with seven layers of Nomex fabric to make the foam rubber more resistant to fire. This has dramatically reduced the kinds of injuries among drivers that Medlen suffered which ultimately resulted in his death.

The project to build a safer car at John Force Racing after his death is called the Eric Medlen Project, with the new chassis often called an Eric Medlen chassis.