A big, big thank you to everybody that helped with my fire incident on Saturday.  In particular:

- The corner workers that waved a fire extinguisher at me a few laps before I pulled in.  I did see it the one in corner 3, but I thought that if it was a bad enough problem to pull in for, I'd get the meatball.  Stupid decision, hopefully I won't do the same thing if there is a next time.
- All the guys that ran *towards* my car with fire extinguishers instead of away from it like any sane person would.  Thank you.  If I hadn't been able to get out of the car, you would have saved my life.
- The nice lady that got me out of the pit lane and gave me a ride in the gator to get checked out by the paramedics.
- The paramedics and Dr. Wong, who were very professional and thorough in making sure that I was 100% ok.
- The folks that cleaned up the mess my car left in the pit lane.
- All the people that checked with me afterwards to see how I was doing.

Again, a big thank you to all of you.

I was in pre-grid and remembered I hadn't pulled my fire bottle pin. So I pulled it out and it must have been 10 seconds later that you came in looking like a dragon flying backwards.

Good job everyone, makes me feel that much safer to know how efficient everything was! We've all seen the videos of so called professional races where things didn't work quite as smoothly.

:)

Just wanted to give a big "+1" to the kudos to everybody.

I was just a few yards away and had my camera instead of a fire bottle, and it was amazing how quickly it developed and was handled.

Glad everything worked out as well as they did.

http://porsche.jeffgrant.com/download/file.php?id=726&mode=view

http://porsche.jeffgrant.com/download/file.php?id=727&mode=view

http://porsche.jeffgrant.com/download/file.php?id=728&mode=view

http://porsche.jeffgrant.com/download/file.php?id=729&mode=view

http://porsche.jeffgrant.com/download/file.php?id=730&mode=view

Is it me, or don't the photos open?

It's you. I see them fine.

I've linked them from a post I made on another site:  http://porsche.jeffgrant.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=3643#p25833

If you can't see them here, you might have better luck with that link.

Glad you understood the fire bottle I was brandishing at you in 3.  You gave me what I thought was a perplexed look, wasn't sure you knew what I was waving it around for.

Very glad you're okay.

  Brings into focus the exercise Mike Currie initiated last year on how fast can you exit your car .
  If you have not planned or practiced this please do so.
   seconds count.

Roland

Jeff, do you mind if I link to those images from a different forum?  I have to say, it's almost scarier looking at the pictures than it was being in the car.  I actually didn't see any flame until I had the door open and was on my way out.  I had no idea it was as bad as it was until after the fact.

Boo, I was a little bit confused, so you read that right.  Part of my mind was saying "my engine is still pulling hard, temperature is good, oil pressure is good, so whatever they're waving the extinguisher about can't be that big of a problem."  Then the next time past it wasn't being waved, so I thought "well, whatever it was, it must have fixed itself".  In hindsight, that's pretty stupid.

Jordy Isaak wrote on May 17^th, 2011 at 5:26am:

Jeff, do you mind if I link to those images from a different forum?  I have to say, it's almost scarier looking at the pictures than it was being in the car.  I actually didn't see any flame until I had the door open and was on my way out.  I had no idea it was as bad as it was until after the fact.

By all means, go right ahead.

Thanks :-).

You can see the full set of pics I took, at slightly larger resolution, here:  http://pics.bulletracing.ca/main.php?g2_itemId=7830

Looking over the pics, I am impressed with how EVERYONE came to my nephew Jordy's aid. You guys all rock!!

ps. don't tell his mother!!

Live and learn Jordy.  Next time (fingers crossed that there isn't) you'll know.  We figured you couldn't see it as it was all under-car.  

Incidentally, what eventually made you pull off the track?

Between corners 6 and 7, the amount of smoke the fire was putting out very very quickly changed from "I can see a little bit of smoke in my rear view mirror once in a while, maybe I'm burning some oil" to "the car interior is full of smoke".  That's what finally convinced me that this wasn't a question of limping my car to the end of the race but rather a question of how quickly I could put it in the pits and get out.

This makes a case for radio communications from crew to car, that's for sure!

I'm kind of curious why the car wasn't meatballed?

One of our drivers saw flame from under the car for a couple of laps... and the corner workers obviously saw it and brandished a fire bottle... but why no official black/meatball?

I'd figure that in the case of fire, you'd want to error on the safe side.

$0.02

What failed?

Don't know yet.  My job is keeping me busy enough that I likely won't know for a few weeks.

hope you sprayed the car down with water, i heard some fire retardant can eat away at wires, by the looks of the fuel that was leaking from under the car I would say that a fuel line came off , if the car was not slowing , maybe the return?