Yikes! This is a pretty nuts video that was shot at the Texas Mile during the 2013 season by the crew at GearheadFlicks. The video, which has in car and out of car footage shows a heavily modified C6 Corvette sprinting down the course, suffering a nitrous explosion, and then roasting BAD as fire crews equipped only with extinguishers battle it. While the “pop” itself isn’t all that violent, the fact that several seconds after it the driver starts to see flames licking into the cockpit makes it kind of creepy. The dude gets the car slowed down as he is peeling off his belts, yanking the steering wheel, and then flopping out the door of the still moving Vette. For whatever reason (unless we missed seeing him do it) he did not yank the fire bottles which should have helped to at least knock this thing down. It isn’t five seconds that he’s out of the car when huge rolling flames are present. The in-car camera lives through the fire and finally falls off the mount about four minutes into the blaze. We’re thinking that the mount melted or whatever was holding it in place liquified because of the intense heat.
Safety people roll up on the car in a menagerie of vehicles and whip out fire extinguishers to battle the blaze but one thing that we expected to see never appeared. A fire truck. There are guys with the firefighter gear on and a red suv with some flashing lights on top but the best these guys had to hit the burning car with was water and foam extinguishers. The eventually got the fire out because there is a shot of it at the end all roasted, but we still expected to see a legit fire fighting truck pull up to the scene. The GearheadFlicks guys did an awesome job laying the audio from the in-car camera over their shots from out of the car. It makes you feel that you are on scene with the dudes trying to stop the fire.
There’s not a whole lot left of this Corvette’s engine bay by the time the fire quit wrecking everything. We’re just glad the driver was able to flop to safety OK.
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE A VICIOUS NITROUS FIRE FROM THE TEXAS MILE!
I have never seen such an IDIOT driver…missed shifts, zing the engine……
Probably another case where the electric fuel pump just kept feeding the fire. And soda water fire extinguishers……….straight outta the 50’s.
Wow, there are several things that come to mind. My company distributes fire suppression systems for race cars so I have some observations.
A. This is exactly why I carry 30Lbs of fire suppression systems in my LSR car.
10LBS on the top and bottom end of the engine
10LBS on me the Driver
10LBS automatic in the fuel cell/batteries in the trunk.
Looked like a wimpy 5lbs system that the fuel fire easily overwhelmed.
B. Took too long for the driver to exit.
C. Scary response from the Texas mile folks. Where was the real fire truck? What if the driver passed out from smoke and was still in the car. You guys should have some training on how to approach a fire suppression emergency.
D. Lastly, driver what’s up with the face shield up? That is your only defense to keep a flash fire in your interior out of you eyes and lungs. Second, in a crash the face shield keeps the glass and gravel out of your eyes.
Glad the driver is ok, Sorry about the car it looked like a nice one. Take what you learned and build a safer race car. Please keep that face shield down. If your helmet fogs get an air blower their $100 bucks and they give you positive pressure in your helmet to help keep the fire out of your lungs.
I agree with everything Bill mentions above. It amazes me at the amount of fast cars and bike that run at Texas yet the organizers still seem to spend more time and money on score boards than safety. Fire truck and ambulance needs to be there at all times. Not sure why the driver didn’t at least through the car into gear and get it stopped instead of letting it keep rolling either. Trust in your safety equipment goes a long way in being able to make smart decisions during an event like this. Glad he is ok.
B.
I noticed that too. Looks like the driver has never practiced “GTFO”. I never thought of that, but it seems it would be a good thing to practice safe in your driveway.
Darrell is right and as a firefighter all sanctioned events should be required to have a class 1 fire engine on site for these situations. You need a fair amount of water to extinguish these fires.
Unfortunately, there are far too many racers who will race without having proper safety gear in place. NO fire truck? NO ambulance? I wouldn’t unload a car unless both of those are in place. Onboard fire suppression systems are cheap compared to rebuilding an entire car. And the driver? He certainly didn’t look prepared to be driving that thing either. Glad he was ok, but learn how to drive before you go at it again.
Racers need to learn that you aren’t just driving to work, be prepared for the worst. If you can’t afford the safety equipment, you can’t afford to race.
WOW talk about giving our fast growing motorsport a black eye.. Way to go Texas Mile, very unprofessional. As for the driver, glad he’s ok, but really, is he that bad a driver, if mechanical failure caused the shifting problems he should have shut it down sooner. There is always tomorrow, well not for this car!!!
It looks like they used every extinguisher on site. I wonder if they continued the meet without any fire suppression? Way to go Texas!!
Words fail me, other than “wow”… I’ve heard that they’re getting better with safety requirements down there, but this is exactly why we race SCTA and ECTA only, and have never ventured to the Texas Mile… Scary! I’m glad the driver is OK and hope we’ll all think through our safety routines twice next time we’re at the track! You can blame the organizers all you want, but at the end of the day it is up to each racer to decide between right and wrong, safe and silly, prepared or un-prepared… and most of all to know your car and your safety routines before you unzip and let your balls hang out!
The simple truth of it is guys everyone has a choice on rather or not to unload the car or not to race and to decide what is safe enough for themselves. So there is no one to blame but themselves and if thats what they want to do who are you to say otherwise? Hell half the racing ever done, the most famous of race drivers, famous of wins where done with little or no safety and they knew it but it was a choice just as it is today.
Yay! More Corvette carnage!
Burn those corvettes. Burn ’em up good!
Don’t them idiots at the Texas Mile know they need a real fire truck for things like that?
…. food for thought, and they kept on running cars that day with all firefighting equipment exhausted
Looks like they need to come to the Kansas Speedway for some fire training. I can not believe they did not have a truck on the track.
Hey-The in-car camera worked great
While many things are not right I do not see how you blame NOS for the fire. Seems to me someone is looking for press more than finding the answer as to what happened. The fire started BUT needed fuel for it to burn. NOS is NOT a fuel. My guess would be there was another failure for the fire and the NOS was not the start of it at all. Fire Systems should be a must and knowing how to use it too on any race car. You spend 100K building a late model vette and are not willing or smart enough to spend the money on a good fire protection system, seems kind of dumb doesn’t it!