







DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The fireball across the way flashed into the dark night causing their heads to jerk up and take notice. Inside the race control room, high above Daytona International Speedway, a group of NASCAR and track officials stared out in shock, awe and horror.

The Daytona 500 was on fire.

"You can't print what got said," Robin Pemberton, NASCAR's vice president of competition said. "It was just in unison, 'Holy whatever.' "

Juan Pablo Montoya's rear suspension had just failed during the yellow flagged lap 160 of last year's Daytona 500, causing him to skid into a jet dryer that was innocently clearing debris from the famed track. The result was a massive explosion before Montoya's car even slid down into the grass.

The sport's signature race, already moved for the first time in 54 years to prime-time Monday due to inclement weather, was now dealing with the most improbable of situations. "I have hit a lot of things, but a jet dryer?" Montoya would say that night. "[As I skidded to it] I was thinking, 'This is going to be on fire pretty bad.' "

He was correct about that. Montoya was able to stagger out of his disintegrated car, his helmet burned from the explosion. A rescue worker sprinted by him toward the jet dryer, where Duane Barnes, the driver, needed help out of the truck. At that point, it was spewing jet fuel onto the high banking of Turn 3, but the track itself had not caught on fire.

Meanwhile in race control, with a camera zooming in on the truck, everyone was shouting at once.





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"[NASCAR president] Mike Helton and I were both looking at the camera, yelling, 'Get the fire crew there, dispatch them, send them, send them,' " Joie Chitwood, president of the Speedway said. "Normally you wait until there is a fire, but we knew the fuel leaking down the track was going to light up, our world was [about] to get lit up.

"And then it did."



This is the story of how Daytona International Speedway and NASCAR managed to somehow put out a 200-gallon jet-fuel fire, save the track, re-bond the surface, obey all Environmental Protection Agency regulations, entertain a growing national television audience during a nearly two-hour delay, finish the race after perhaps the most bizarre moment in its storied history and eventually have its stressed-out executives avoid any heart attacks.

And it also explains this:

"Where did they get all that Tide detergent?" Danica Patrick asked. "That's what I want to know."









The first goal was assuring the safety of Montoya and Barnes. They were transported together to the infield medical center and were later deemed fine.

"He looked pretty scared," Montoya said at the time, which might be expected when your truck blows up with you in it. (Montoya actually doesn't like to discuss the incident anymore, the realization of being so close to such a big fire is deathly serious to him.)

The second goal was to save the track, which was more complicated than just putting out the fire. It was imperative to keep the track as cool as possible in an effort to prevent it from melting under the intense heat. So even if the truck kept burning, that wasn't the biggest concern.

"There is a plan for everything, even a plan for this," Pemberton said. "A lot of people didn't understand at the time, but we knew there was a finite amount of fuel that was going to come out of there.

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