NASCAR hauler catches fire at Indianapolis Motor Speedway
This weekend, NASCAR returns to Indianapolis, Indiana. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course will host the NASCAR Cup Series / Indycar Series double-header.
Watch the video the William Byron hauler fire below.
On Thursday, teams arrived at the track to be staged. The hauler was parked outside of the track.
It appears that a generator fire broke out on the Hendrick Motorsports No. 24 hauler. The entire front portion of the trailer was destroyed by flames.
The flames were extinguished before the fire department arrived. A team washing haulers saw the fire and were able to put it out.
NASCAR has allowed the team to store the car in the garage area, ahead of time.
The car inside the hauler was not damaged. It was placed on a rollback trailer and taken into the garage area. The car was dirty from the smoke but other than that it appeared to be damage free.
The team is sending a backup hauler to the track for the weekend.
24 year old William Byron finished 33rd in last year’s debut of the Indianapolis Road Course. The No. 24 has a new look this weekend with Acronis as the primary sponsor. The same wrap will make another appearance later this season at Bristol.
Related: One NASCAR team hauler crashes; Another catches fire en route to Kansas Speedway (2019)
Hendrick Motorsports comments
“It was a great team effort from NASCAR personnel and track workers, fellow truck drivers, the fire department to be able to get it contained where we have everything we need this weekend,” Fugle told NASCAR.com.
“We have to get a new hauler, but everybody’s safe and all the equipment was able to be salvaged so that part’s great.”
“We’re not gonna really know until we go on track but as of right now we don’t see any kinds of performance damage at all.”
“The biggest impact is just not having a trailer, which is our hub in the garage area for now. We probably won’t have one that we can work out of until Sunday, but we have teammates that we can borrow from and NASCAR has helped us out by having an internet hub in here so we can use our garage area toolbox generator and kind of use that as our home base for looking at information, data and things for inspection, and tomorrow to make good decisions.”
“I worked with some older guys as you’re growing up, and they say if you do this long enough, you’re gonna have something new happen and something crazy happen, and things you never thought would happen to you always happen.”
He added, “So definitely mark this off when they go write it down in the book.”
William Byron comments
“I just think our team just takes it in stride, and just moves on and focuses on what we can control this weekend,” Byron told NASCAR.com.
“I’m excited for it, and it doesn’t really change much for the weekend. I feel like these guys do a really good job of just adapting. We’re really fortunate to have a lot of good resources at Hendrick, so I think they’re going to bring the test hauler that we ran at Watkins Glen and tested with, so we’ve got a lot of great resources.”
Byron added, “If we were a single-car team or something, I’d be concerned, but thankful for all the people and support we have at Hendrick to deal with something like this.”
William Byron
Hauler Fire
Video
Links
William Byron | Hendrick Motorsports | Indianapolis Motor Speedway | NASCAR
