Charlie Kimball's IndyCar Brakes Are Figuratively Toast

By  Stef Schrader

Today's IndyCar practice was interrupted by a particularly stubborn brake fire out of Charlie Kimball's car. Between this and the Fiery On Road Dead incident from IMSA practice, maybe California needs to periodically assess car-b-que risk like they do for wildfires. Threat level: at least moderate.

The Grand Prix of Long Beach has fast long straights and bends with hard braking zones that love to cause brake fade and failure. Jack Hawksworth spun his car due to boiled brake fluid in the session. Kimball's failure was a bit more explosive than most, however.

Look at it, man. If brakes weren't made out of all kinds of materials that are unfit for human consumption, you could roast a marshmallow here.

Kimball wasn't the only racer running into trouble. Before Kimball suffered from toasty brake syndrome, America's big Formula One hope and California native Alexander Rossi got an up-close view of the Long Beach street circuit's tires coming out of Turn 8:

Rossi was later cleared from the medical center. He explained that his car mostly just has suspension damage from the crash, so it's nothing the team can't put back together for the weekend.

Fake Will Power, one of the few occasionally funny parody accounts on Twitter, had a more likely theory, though:

Ouch! (Harsh, but I chuckled.)

Between the two red flags, IndyCar opted to add five more minutes to the practice session to make up for the lost time.

2015 Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya ran the fastest during today's practice session. Montoya's Team Penske teammate Real Will Power was 0.2424 seconds behind Montoya. Power was later discovered not to have a concussion at St. Petersburg, so he's good to go for this weekend.

Full practice results can be found here.

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