Daniel Suarez was the first driver out of Saturday night’s race at Daytona International Speedway after his Chevrolet went up in flames on pit road.
Suarez escaped without injury as the rear of his car burned. The bizarre incident happened after a round of pit stops when fuel that had spilled into the pit box was ignited from the backfire of Denny Hamlin’s car. All of this came from a chain of events with Suarez and Hamlin trying to leave their pit stalls but not being able to do so cleanly.
“I was doing my pit stop just like every single weekend,” Suarez said. “The No. 11 (Hamlin) was right behind me and the No. 21 (Harrison Burton) was right in front of me, so unfortunately, I got boxed in. We know that every single time we do a pit stop, we drop a little bit of fuel and that’s completely normal. Unfortunately, the No. 11 was leaving his pit stall right behind me, and because he was waiting for me to leave, his exhaust fired up the little fuel I dropped. Because I was still parked there, that went up the back of my car where the fuel cell is and it just grabbed it.
“It was a very unfortunate situation. I don’t know what we could have done differently. Just sad that we’re out of the race this way, but I’m glad I’m fine and the entire team was fine. The other crazy thing is that I was able to feel the heat, but because I don’t run a rearview mirror and only run the rearview camera, I couldn’t see it. The rearview camera is connected to the rear bumper, so I could see the smoke, but I couldn’t see the fire. I could feel the heat, but I couldn’t see how big it was.”