Helio Castroneves cant seem to catch a break. Having already been 78 points behind Scott Dixon with only 3 races remaining, he has hit yet another MAJOR snag in his pursuit of the IndyCar Series Championship.
Misfortune reared its ugly head when his and Ryan Briscoe’s primary road racing car, along with much of Team Penske’s equipment, was lost in a fire when a transporter burned to the ground!
It turns out that a wheel bearing failure started the fire, which could not be put out in time to save the equipment, which was supposed to be used at this weekend’s race at Infineon Raceway.
Jokingly, Cindric, head of the race team, estimated the damage to be “a couple million bucks” and called the whole ordeal “a big melted mess”.
It breaks down like this…the transporters cost around $400,000 and the cars are worth at least $500,000 each. Add to that the pit equipment, uniforms, shock dynamometer and other various things, and you have one expensive mishap = /
Luckily, there were no injuries. The two drivers, after attempting to extinguish the flames themselves and failing, detached the tractor and saved it.
This incident is the 2nd major mishap to occur for the team in 3 years. In 2006, the team’s IndyCar headquarters was the victim of a major flood, however, the team responded by winning the next race at Kansas Speedway.
“I hope we can turn it around pretty quickly,” Castroneves said. “I know my guys are going to be extremely tired. We seem to always perform in these circumstances,” Castroneves said