This is some wild video! Top Fuel racer Mark Sheehan and his tuner, American John Smith were lucky to escape unscathed from this scary fire down in Australia. Sheehan was sitting in his car and Smith was working with the crew to fire it when things went totally awry. As you will see, when the car is started fuel starts spraying from the fuel pump area on the front of the engine back toward the headers. Smith immediately sees the problem as he’s getting doused in the fuel and tries desperately for a couple seconds to get the leak stopped, to no avail. As soon as one barf of fuel makes to to the header pipe, a whole bunch of fire ensues. In fact, you can just about pin point the second the blaze starts when a lick of header flame ignites the raw fuel.
For several seconds the motor and even the slicks are totally engulfed in flames. Also, the massive puddle of fuel on the ground ignites creating a wild lake of fire under the car. If anything this is an illustration of how quickly it can wrong with a top fuel car and that they truly live and die around the fuel system that flows nitro like a city sewer system.
Several angles contribute to the coolness of this film. We see the fire from afar, from a camera looking back toward the engine, and another mounted on the wing and facing forward. Luckily no one was hurt and we’re guessing the damage was minimal. NITRO CAR-B-QUE!
Thanks to Chuck Noble for the tip!
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE MARK SHEEHAN’S TOP FUEL DRAGSTER BURST INTO FLAMES FROM A BUSTED FUEL FITTING DOWN UNDER!
Good thing that this didn’t happen in the pits…
Great job by the fire crew!! Calm and effecient!
I agree, fire crew was on top of this one. Great work!
This kind of changed my perspective on these things, since I never really thought you could die in the staging lanes.
Really scary!
Love the crewchief trying to tighten the loose line by hand while getting “pepper sprayed” by NITRO….!! Nitro has a flash point of almost 100 degrees so it burns almost as good as diesel fuel does without heat and compression.
But it will burn if forced to….. nice job by the safety crew.
WOW, great job by the fire crews!
I have to admit though, in the first segment of the video, that chick’s yoga pants were distracting!
I can’t believe the incompetance and the neglect of safety by the guy who was letting the nitro spray all over him. If I was reviewing this tape as the driver, I would of fired him on the spot. He put his crew and his driver in jeopardy by not shutting down that motor immediately!
The car broke a rod on start up.
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