I don't know the real skinny on it, but some say it was rigged so that nitrous fogged into the hood scoop. I do remember Eckman's car blowing up the dry sump oil tank when the nitrous bottle exploded. Here's some chatter from another site.......

"it was jerry eckman/bill orndorf racing who had the bottle explode in there oil pan...actually blew out of the oil pan and hit the hauler next to them,he was banned from nhra competition for awhile.....the dodge boys got caught because their nitrous accidently activated while doing a burnout and a photographer noticed the plume of vapor inside the scoop..........it was only being used in the last 100 ft or so of the pass just to give em a lil umff..which it did perfectly till they got caught.....staged the break-in at there shop saying there stuff was vandalized and destroyed being the reason they couldn't race...when it was actually the nhra banning them and mopar...nhra let them lie about it so MOPAR wouldn't be the laughing stock of nhra."

It was in the oil tank, not oil pan on Eckman's car.