IndyCar – Flaming Texas Failure and the Decline of Safety in the IndyCar Series

Silvestro on Fire in Texas Simona de Silvestro’s effort at Texas came to an inglorious end on Saturday night. After an accident that left her stranded on track with the right sidepod spouting flames, it took the IndyCar travelling safety crew 40 seconds to extract her from the car. Apparently, the fire hose that they have attached to the safety truck failed and the fire bottles that they brought to bear on the blaze proved insufficient for the task. This resulted in one of the crew members forcefully yanking Simona…

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IndyCar – New Fuel Probe for 2010

Hopefully a recently announced change to the refueling system for the 2010 IndyCar season will see a reduction in the number of premature drive-offs and fuel spills that lead to the fiery pit-lane incidents that we saw in 2009. Two such incidents stand out in my mind: Meira’s fire at Indianapolis, and Tony “The Torch” Kanaan’s fire in Edmonton. In both of these incidents, fuel was sprayed over the driver and car during a refueling stop and was ignited by the exhaust manifold. These situations are often caused by premature…

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