Jet Dragster Driver Kat Moller Killed in Crash

Not every young lady dreams of strapping herself onto a jet engine and launching down a drag strip at 300 mph. The potential thrill—and the potential danger—are immediately obvious. And for most people, let alone most young ladies, the thrill is far too small and the danger, far too real.

Kat Moller was not “most young ladies.” For her, blasting down a racetrack at blinding speed, propelled by a barely contained ongoing explosion, was as good as it got.  

And, right until everything went wrong, her life was right where she wanted it to be.        

Katarina “Kat” Moller unfortunately died of injuries sustained at a crash at Florida’s Sebring International Raceway on Nov. 15, when the parachute that was supposed to stop her car failed to deploy. Her car slammed into the timing station and then into the concrete wall at Turn One, according to Autoweek.

Moller was making the first of a pair of demonstration runs, firing up the crowd that showed up for Sebring’s popular Thursday Night Drag Racing, where anyone with a street-legal car can pay $20 and make an eighth-mile pass down the front straight.

Mark Silver was watching from the stands near the start line.

“She did her normal staging process, then made a full pass,” he told DragZine.com.

“At the 1/8-mile I did see what looked like a small parachute, which is the one that pulls out to deploy the main chute. But there was no main chute.”

“After crossing the cones, I saw her swerve all the way into the right lane, then she appeared to hit the right lane wall and kept going. All of the safety personnel and the ambulance went down to the end of the track.”

“It’s so sad that she lost her life,” said Silver. “She did do what she loved to do and she seemed very happy and excited right before she did her run.”    

Passionate About Racing

Kat Moller, at 24, had spent 13 years driving dragsters. Starting in a Junior dragster at age 11, she worked her way up into faster and faster cars until, in 2014, she signed with Larsen Motorsports and began driving a Matrix System Jet Dragster, a 5,000 horsepower, 300-mph land-based missile with which she thrilled crowds throughout the Southeast.

Her father was a racer who also owns Corvette West, a speed shop in Sarasota, Florida. He started bringing his daughter to the track when she was a young child, and as she said in an interview posted on her Facebook page, “From my first pass down the track I was hooked, and always wanted to go faster.” 

When she was first signed, she was the youngest jet car driver in the world, Autoweek reported. For the next five years, she was as happy as she could be.

“I just love the speed,” she explained. “It’s exciting—there’s nothing else like it. It’s fun! I want to keep going faster.” 

View this post on Instagram

Happy to have spent the day at the race track ???

A post shared by Kat Moller (@kat_moller_racing) on Mar 24, 2018 at 8:00pm PDT

A Scholar and a Racer

Moller knew she might need more than racing to pay her bills, so while developing her skills at the track, she also earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of South Florida. She then attended grad school at Florida Tech, DragZine reported.

“During the week I work full time as an engineer and then I take the weekends off to go racing,” she said on her Facebook page. At the track, she spent most of her time interacting with fans, signing autographs, posing for pictures, and making friends—work as important for a professional racer as actually driving. 

The loyalty of her fan base was revealed in some of the comments posted on Facebook.

“Rest In Peace Kat Moller You shall live in the hearts of those who loved you and will thus never die or be forgotten,” wrote Todd Sonoga. “Our heart goes out with sorrow when we heard the bad news. We are sending love and remembrance for the brave soul and condolences to your loving family that will forever have you in their hearts.”

Mark Waschke posted, “I’m sorry for her family and racing family’s loss. If my daughter wants to race I will support her 100%.

“I’ve been a mechanic for 30 plus years and I’ve almost been crushed by a truck. I look at life this way you never know when you ate going to go so live every day life to its fullest and dont look back RIP Kat.”

Brian McGreevy said simply, “Tonight the world is a little less special. Kat, you will always be in our thoughts and prayers.”  

John Irvine took a slightly different tack. He suggested, “Don’t mourn her loss, celebrate her life!!”

Jim Ramsay added, “So young, but doing what she loved, RIP Kat.”

And indeed, that was the case.

“I want to keep racing my whole life,” Moller said in the Facebook interview. “It’s what I ‘m passionate about.”

“I want to spend every weekend at the racetrack As long as I am at the race track the rest of my life, I’ll be happy.”

And so, it seems, she was.