m73m95

Anyone watching the Indy car race? This just happened, so no YouTube vid yet.

Simona De Silvestro hit the wall somewhere on the back stretch, and her car went up in flames. Not horribly, but defiantly a big fire. After she stopped, you could see she was having difficulty getting out of the car.

Well, it was a good 10-15 seconds before any safety workers showed up, and then NONE OF THEM COULD FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE THE FIRE EXTINGUISHERS!!!!!! They were fumbling around for another good 10 seconds before ANY fire suppression started..... meanwhile, no one is trying to help De Silvestro out of her car.

So FINALLY they start spraying the fire, but still no one could get her out of the car....so they just start tugging on her. They finally yanked her out of the car, and she walked over to the wall. I think they did more damage to her by pulling on her, than the fire did. Not that it would have been ok to let the fire comsume her, but still, acting on panic is sometimes worse than the actual incident...... total epic corner worker fail.... all around.

mj951

No surprise, when Ralph Schumacher hit the wall in '05 it took a few minutes before anyone was on schene...just awful watching him sit slumped over in the car for that long.

Larry Herman

Just saw this thread and was able to rewind my DVR and see it. WTF is right. Where were the fire extinguishers? At least they were right there and jumped in to help her as opposed to what happened to that poor driver in the Lambo Challenge crash.

slvr993

I saw it>>>could not believe what I was watching. It truly looked like this was the first time these guys had tried using the equipment.

Brinkley

+1000000000000000.
I can't stand watching corner workers / fire fighters running around looking at each other with that "I can't believe this is happening to me", look and forgetting to get an extinguisher on scene. The first one on scene still had its pin in and the freaked out worker stumbled and clamored to get it pulled. Why wouldn't every bottle have its pin pulled.

Same thing happened today at the Glen with Grand Am. Car is burning to the ground in pit in and no fire truck! other teams are left to run down and try to save a fully engulfed car with tiny fire bottles.

Don't get me started about the ****ty Honda fire trucks that showed up with absolutely no sense of emergency!

Track Junkie

C.J. Ichiban

lets get the flames retarded, lets get these retarded fire people some @#$^ing training!!

multi21

40 seconds from the time the car stopped on the apron and she was yanked out and 41 seconds until they began to put water on the fire. Not acceptable.

Wreck Me Otter

Looked like a Three Stooges skit...sadly put our lives in their hands...I hope there is some kind of review of their "efforts"....

Fire extinguishers were there...they just couldn't get the safety pins out...or didn't know how...

slvr993

It will be interesting to see if an official statement comes out. I was watching this with my 11 year old and when the car came to a stop I said " this will be cool, watch how quickly they get this fire out" I could see real concern on his face. 20 Seconds later - "Dad why are they letting "him" just burn?"

Hard to explain why three guys with fire hoses and fire extinguishers aren't putting out the fire.

Track Junkie

VaSteve

Was that pit in or was that the newly paved run off for Turn 10? I thought the latter.

I was a WG for a club event last summer. One of the cars had an issue....and they thought it was a fire. The Turn 1 flagger was the fire fighter. He had to abandon his post at Turn 1 (on the opposite side of the track) and get to the pit area. W.T.F.?

ltc

First off she is fine. Fortunately, the majority of the fire appeared to be contained to the outside of the cockpit and to just one side.

I am going to guess that this wouldn't have happened in the days of CART.

I am also expecting Tony George to basically emulate Bud Saelig when it comes to acting on the incident.

Inexcusable, under any circumstance or explanation.

Kein_Ersatz

For the Texas Indy race. it was painful to watch her sit there and then the workers seemed daze and confused when they arrived on the scene. Thank you racing suits! They were all fumbling with hoses and no one was helping her out of the car. They need to drill / more practice like pit crews. It is a rare event, like most firefighting is, but they need to be better at it then they were.

The Glen too was hard to watch but for different reasons, he got out safe, but the car burned for a long time before it was under control.

MUSSBERGER

That could have been really bad.