July 7, 2013 - Saturday was a good day of racing for me. Poor qualifying put me at the back, but a good run had me finish second and only 3.5 seconds behind the winner at one point. Sunday was shaping up to be a good race with better qualifying and with me running second and third in the opening laps. I was buzzing my engine to real high revs from Turn Five to Turn Six and from Six to the table top just before the Corkscrew. I was doing so to eliminate a couple of extra shifts. But all the buzzing the engine up to 7,400 RPM took its toll and the engine let go. It was rather quiet, just a slight bit of shudder in the engine and I let off right away not sure what it was in the split seconds, but suspicion of my engine coming apart. As I moved to get off the track the smoke came in the cabin and I stopped and got out. I looked at the car a bit expecting possible fire, but I just saw smoke as I have gotten the past two blown engines. I shrugged and decided I better get out of a section of track where cars are doing 110-120 MPH since I possible laid down oil. I jogged behind the wall in an opening about 100 feet away and started walking back to the corner station as I figured I might as well watch from one of the best spots on the track. As I walked past the car on the other side of the wall I glanced over and noticed a wisp of 6" flame just starting to peek out the hood vents. I ran back and pulled the handles on my two fire systems. I heard the corner worker shout behind me that she had an extinguisher. I pulled the pin and stared spraying. Spraying under the car had the best results, but the small extinguisher was expiring just as the fire truck rolled up and two guys jumped out with huge canisters. They put out the fire. The video auto-shuts-down just as the fire is starting. The video turns on automatically when the car moves and shuts down after about a minute of the car not moving so it does not capture the bigger flames and the fire rescue. She burned for about a minute, but the damage was still substantial. We have a lot of work to do in the next month to replace an engine, a bunch of burned wires and other stuff before the National Championship Race at Miller Motorsports Park. youtu.be/QKy2Mtscq3s
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 04:22:39 +0000
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