Every once in a while we come across a video that reminds us how dangerous car racing can be. What started as an innocent ride for a fan at a Formula Drift event in Long Beach, California last weekend quickly turned into a scary fire incident that fortunately didn’t occur. ‘resulted in no serious injuries.
Kevin Darwish posted a video to YouTube on Wednesday documenting his near-burning experience halfway through a ride in a top-level Mustang RTR drift car driven by professional driver James Deane.
The ride begins innocently enough, with Deane ripping into a few donuts before hitting the high-speed Long Beach urban course. After just two laps, a burst of smoke appeared under the hood, before quickly turning into fire. It takes about five seconds for the fire to begin to enter the cabin, and at that point Darwish and Deane begin to crawl out of their respective bucket seats and climb over the roll bar and out of the car.
If you look closely, you can see Deane pressing what appears to be the fire suppression system button as soon as the fire starts, which briefly extinguishes the flames. But less than a second later, the fire becomes more powerful than the firewall can handle, and the two crawl away and abandon all hope of saving the car. Somehow, Deane and Darwish escape relatively unscathed.
The aftermath video isn’t pretty. The entire front of the car is charred and probably beyond repair. A peak into the engine compartment reveals a burned-out V-8 engine.
Darwish says he wasn’t told what was wrong with the RTR Mustang. Hopefully Deane and his team identify the problem so something like this doesn’t happen again.
