Fire safety story from grassroots Motorsports

[flynntuna]

Here's a good article from grassroots Motorsports on fire safety.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/ar...paign=GRMDaily

Something to keep in mind.

[RoadRacer]

Wow. That's an eye-opening and excellent article. I haven't raced for years, but I now realize I was half-assing it and lucky. I had suit, gloves, etc, but never practiced an emergency or exit once.

[NAZ]

Thank you flynntuna, that's a great story from a man who prepared for the worst and was able to survive to tell. Working as a professional pipe fitter (that's a guy who welds pipe for those that don't know) I've been on fire and burned more than most folks and can tell you it is extremely painful. Not only the burning part but the part were the doctor scrapes the black blistered dead skin off the burn areas every couple of days and no they don't give you anything for the pain when they do. It feels like a wire brush on a sunburn.

One thing I would ad is something the NHRA requires of drivers as part of their licensing test. They make you pass a blindfold test where you have to be able to reach all the safety equipment with a blindfold on. The master cutoff, the parachute, the fuel cutoff, the fire system, the steering wheel release, the window net, etc. The tester will call out an item and you have to demonstrate that you can quickly reach it without fumbling around. Some categories of drag cars seem prone to explosive fires so the NHRA has really gone to lengths to make the sport safer and a big part of that is driver performance in an emergency. This is carried down through every level of NHRA license not just Top Fuel and Funny Car.

So while you use your safety gear and practice getting out of your car you may want to practice this with your eyes closed as we can see from the story posted by flynntuna that during a fire you will likely not be able to see clearly if at all.

[Mark Eaton]

That is a sobering article