Simona de Silvestro’s cars have an unfortunate history of catching fire at the Indianapolis 500, it seems. Today’s practice session fire was her third fire in five visits to the famous race. Fortunately, she was able to hop out of the car before flames caught up to her seat inside.
Something in the rear of the car caught fire as it exited Turn 2 of the track and let out a big cloud of smoke from the back of the car. As flames engulfed the rest of the car as it headed towards Turn 3, de Silvestro pulled over and hopped out, escaping any harm.
According to Racer, the team found that a faulty refueling buckeye allowed ethanol to pour onto the car’s headers and catch fire.
Racer caught up with her after the fire, and she had this to say about the unfortunate car-b-que:
We were going down the straightaway then I looked in my mirror and saw the car was on fire. It’s definitely unfortunate because the car is pretty burnt down, and it’s really frustrating that it seems like fire follows me. Maybe this time is third times the charm, and hopefully the team can get the car back together as quickly as possible.
Until now, everything was working fine, and it’s just annoying because it’s a pretty big setback for us, but I have four great teammates and that will make it easier for us to continue moving forward.
While it’s never good to see a car on fire, de Silvestro hopes that the team will have it ready again for tomorrow.
[H/T Racer]
Contact the author at stef.schrader@jalopnik.com.