Simona de Silvestro's car bursts into flames during Indy 500 practice (VIDEO)
INDIANAPOLIS -- For the third time in her career, Verizon IndyCar Series driver Simona de Silvestro has had to bail out of her race car because of a fire. The most recent scare came in Tuesday’s practice for the 99th Indianapolis 500 when di Silvestro’s Honda left pit road and was on an out lap trying to get up to speed when the rear of the car caught fire.
The Holmatro Safety Crew arrived and de Silvestro was able to get out of the car uninjured. According to the driver from Switzerland, there was a fuel leak from a faulty “buckeye” -- the part of the fueling system that seals after a car is fueled. The defective buckeye is a chassis issue according to the Andretti Autosport driver.
“Hopefully, we’ll get it back together soon,” de Silvestro said. “Unfortunately we don’t have a T-car (backup) so we have to fix the car and try to get back out.
“I’m starting to believe that fire and me go together because it’s the third time in my career. The car really torched up. Maybe the third time is a charm and I don’t have to deal with this any more in my career. It’s motor racing and things happened so maybe we’re lucky this happened early in the week so that we can get back on track on Wednesday and get on the program.”
De Silvestro said she was coming down the frontstretch of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the car would not upshift. She lifted off the accelerator and saw the flames coming out of the car in her rear-view mirror.
De Silvestro is one of five drivers for Andretti Autosport competing in the 99th Indianapolis 500.
“It’s really frustrating,” she said. “It’s something we really didn’t want to have and we have to try to get a car together now. We did a little bit of a run early and was ready to go in a group to run with traffic and we didn’t get to do that. I haven’t run much in traffic lately and it’s really important for me to do that. It’s still early and luckily for me at Andretti I have four really good teammates that know what they are doing out there.
“I want to get back on the horse.”
De Silvestro’s most serious fire came at Texas Motor Speedway in 2010 when she suffered burns to her hands. She also caught on fire at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2011 when she was upside-down following a crash in practice, also suffering burns to her hands.
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