the top fuel dragster is the fastest accelerating man made machine from a standing still position up to 600ft, them they level out, hence the importance of the first 60ft when analysing and calculating data.
this sort of crash is more commonplace that what we may see, the chahssis is designed to bow by the makers, there could have been a problem with the front wing or even the rear wing causing the chassis to bow just that little bit to much under such force, causing the split, im not sure what chassis the farmers use, it would not be too old I'd imagine, but al swindal in the old days used to allow a certain amount to bow in the tube.