A Jalopnik reader had the misfortune of experiencing a fire extinguisher go rogue in the middle of a track day. We can laugh because nobody got hurt, but man, you do not want your car to fill with dry flame retardant while you’re trying to drive fast.
Bandit90 wrote that everything was groovy in the cockpit of his 1984 SCCA ITB BMW 318i until about the 03:23 mark in this video, at which point the fire extinguisher “somehow became unclamped” and turned his hot lap into some kind of low budget haunted house ride.
I’d say he definitely got lucky that the all-consuming white steam drenched his interior while he had a section of the Waterford Hills Road Racing track to himself, and not while he was in traffic, because that could have caused some real problems. I still can’t imagine that stuff was particularly pleasant to breathe or be dosed in, but at least the driver was able to pull into the grass safely.
A week after the incident, he was apparently still cleaning up. Nasty, man. As Bandit90 wrote to us in an e-mail: The video “...shows why you should check over everything in your car at a track day, between every session.” Stay safe out there.
Hat tip to Bandit90, thanks for sharing your goof.