From the March/April 2016 issue of Road & Track.

AS A MOTOR-RACING REPORTER, my season starts in early January at Daytona, then speeds through marquee events at Silverstone, Indy, Le Mans, and countless other tracks until the ride stops in October. By the end of a typical season, I've recorded hundreds of interviews, with everyone from Indy 500 winners to legends who built the sport. I can't lie; it's an amazing way to earn a living, but the real gems—the unforgettable anecdotes—rarely fit the traditional narrative of Heroic Driver Locked in Epic Battle. I'm a sucker for stories of everything going wrong. My clear favorite from 2015, told to me one night over dinner, was from IndyCar veteran Townsend Bell.

"I was putting on my annual sponsor showcase a few years ago at Laguna Seca—right before Christmas," he said. "Toss guests into an exotic car, do some donuts around the paddock, and get them fired up to come on board as a sponsor.

"I wanted something different. I've known Robby Gordon forever and loved the idea of the Stadium Super Trucks series he was launching, so I asked if he'd be willing to loan me a truck. He's like, 'Yeah, yeah, no problem, but you gotta take care of me on this one.'" At the time, Gordon's high-flying, Baja 1000-style trucks were just going into production.

"Robby had one truck. 'It's brand-new, never even been started,' he says. 'It's due at a car show as soon as you get back. It's $200,000 for one of these things, so don't f*** it up.'

"We take the 101 to Paso Robles where we'll spend the night, then drive home in the morning. In Paso Robles, we meet a guy who says he has an uncle who might sponsor us and that maybe he'd enjoy a video of us jumping the truck." That, Bell tells me, was his first bad decision. The plan, fueled by wine that night, was to take the team to a sunrise video shoot at nearby Pismo Beach.

"We had the entire place to ourselves. I climb in, no helmet, street clothes, and fire the thing up. Do my first jump. It's all right, but let's do another one. Better. I do two more. They're good, but I'm maybe getting 10 feet up. These can do 30. No one's impressed."

Enter Bad Decision Number Two.

"So I go one more time, wide open, big air. Landed it! That was amazing. I know we got some great video now. Turn the engine off, and I hear a loud pop. What the hell was that noise? Flames."

The truck became a bonfire.

I bail out, Ricky Bobby-style, turn around, and now the thing is just engulfed.

"I bail out, Ricky Bobby-style, turn around, and now the thing is just engulfed. I look for my friends, and they're gone in a full Forrest Gump sprint. The front end's on fire, the cabin's filling with smoke, so I run back, stick my head in the window, and find the fire [suppression] handle.

"I pull the handle and it comes off in my hand–it's not connected. The truck keeps burning and burning. We're nowhere near the water. All I've got is sand."

It took four hours for the truck to cool enough to be handled. "When it was done, it was so black, it looked like an Apache helicopter. The bodywork is completely gone, the wiring's gone, and I'm not sure how much else is recoverable. The thing's caked in oil and sand, and I'm convinced Robby's going to kill us. That's always an option with Robby."

They dragged it to L.A. Closing in on Gordon's shop, Bell could no longer avoid his reckoning. "We're way late, he's expecting his truck for this car show, and he knows nothing about the fire, so I call him. Robby says, 'Where the hell are you, and hey, how did it go?' I blurt out, 'Okay, it's not destroyed . . . it's just burned.' All I heard after that was 'WHAT THE F***?' about 15 times in a row."

Gordon instructed Bell to meet with his mechanics. And then let him stew for a few days.

"I feared I was on the hook for 200 grand. Robby finally called and said, 'The wrong dipstick was in it. It pressurized, blew out, and kept pumping oil onto the headers. It's a known problem. Let's just split the shipping costs for new bodywork.' It remains the cheapest 200 bucks I've ever spent."

Former motorsports engineer Marshall Pruett has been gathering motorsports stories on behalf of Road & Track since 2010.

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