Daniel Suárez No. 99 car bursts into flames, forces him to jump out on pit road at Daytona
Bad news for Daniel Suárez during the first pit stops of the night. The No. 99 car caught on fire while on pit road following Stage 1. That win from Atlanta keeps looking better and better as the NASCAR Playoffs approach.
Daniel Suárez made a successful pit stop. By the time he made it back to pit road, the back half of his Chevy Camaro caught on fire. There was a bit of fire after Suárez left the pit box originally.
Perhaps some fuel got where it wasn’t supposed to go? The Coca-Cola Zero Sugar car is our after Stage 1 in the namesake race. That’s tough.
Daniel Suárez is going to be in the NASCAR Playoffs. He has a win in his pocket. But this will end what was a pretty good hot streak for the 99 team. This group had put together three straight top-10s prior to tonight’s race at Daytona.
This is going to be an early night for Suárez. If the car had been repairable, Suárez would have been able to rejoin the race. It was a mechanical issue, not due to an on-track incident.
Trackhouse Racing has not had the best luck this season. But they are still making plans for the future.
Daniel Suárez reacts to random fire
After the incident on pit road, Daniel Suárez had time to watch the replay. It was a strange set of circumstances. There was spilled fuel, which is normal on pit road. Then Denny Hamlin tried to get out of his own pit box.
That’s when things went bad. There was a backfire as the two drivers went to leave the pits and that ignited the fuel. It was enough to create a fire on the back of Suárez’s car, leading to the bigger fire a lap later.
“I don’t run a rear-view mirror anymore,” Suárez said on the broadcast afterward. “I just run my rear-view camera, and the camera is on the bumper. I can feel the heat on my back, but I cannot see it. So, I was trying to go fast trying to calm down the fire, but by the time I got here, I could feel a lot of heat and I could see the fire here. Very unfortunate. I don’t what we could have done better. Every single time that we pit, we drop a little bit of fuel.”
A tough break for Daniel Suárez, but he is likely turning his attention to the Round of 16 in the playoffs at this point.