this is the fault of Danica

I instructed at a number of NASA DE's.. a few years ago at Summit Point..

At both the instructors and driver meetings they reiterated that the track is always considered "hot" i.e. pay attention to the flags...there might be rescue equipment on track... local yellows and the slow moving vehicle flags..

There were many occasions during those weekends where cars were going full tilt boogie.. only to come up on local yellows and vehicles on a hook..

Granted we are just lowly DE or HPDE participants...

It worked well in those cases..

In club racing when a yellow comes out it means "catch up to whoever was in front of you"

Apparently same in NASCAR

Personally I have all the respect in the world for the drivers and crews. It's the 'show' that disgusts me. And yes I will, and do watch the big races. When they went to spec racing and emphasized the 'show' is when the lost me for a true fan. Hell in the mid 80's I waited in line at the Kalamazoo track an hour & a half for Bill Elliot's autograph. The 1985 Thunderbird was an awesome race car, and also the first new car I ever bought.

That's what they get for choosing to use the chebby volt as their pace car ;)

Not only did it take a long time for the fire crew to get there, when they did they had the wrong ammo. Fire retardant foam is messy but it works. They had, basically, a hand held CO2 set up with a (fortunately) big tank.

You know there's a problem when an area you've extinguished flares up behind you.

So Tide puts out fires or soaks up the fuel?

Tide is not one of my sponsors but .....Tide with bleach kills off the moss on the roof.

I would think that the detergent when watered down picks up petroleum products......& it was probably free if not in a plain brown wrapper:D.

detergents make water "wetter" - my guess is that will enhance it's ability to suppress flames

Neither, it helps breakdown the spilled fuel. They used AFFF for fire suppersion. It smothers the flame. The problem they were having is basically called a gravity fire, which the foam will just run off of.

Just like when you wash your hands in the sink. Tide just ran a commercial showing them using it to clean up the mess. Kinda cool.

Exactly. Foam only works when there is an unbroken blanket of foam covering the fire. Once there is an opening the vapors wil reignite.

Some of the firefighters (if they can be called that) were standing down hill from the fuel and it was coming off the banking. NASCAR needs some fast responce trucks like 4x4 brush trucks to get to something like this quicker.

And what happens to AFFF when we introduce a surfactant like tide?

Bueller?

Pretty sure the fire was out well before the tide was introduced to the scene.