Plans for Palm Beach International Raceway to go out in a blaze of glory didn’t include Don Garlits’ electric dragster going up in flames.

Yet that’s what happened Saturday at the 58-year-old facility’s scheduled final event. A malfunction of some battery cells caused a fire that Garlits said will set back the development of his 'Swamp Rat 38' dragster “probably a couple of months, at least.”

It’s the latest disappointment with the project for Garlits, a 17-time national champion in Top Fuel competition. He fell short in his bid to become the first racer to crack the 200-mph barrier with an electric car when Steve Huff beat him to it in May 2020. Now Garlits’ dragster, which he recently revamped to try to top Huff’s mark, is sidelined while he ponders his next move.

The highlight of the track’s final race was expected to be the presence of “Big Daddy” and his dragster. The show didn’t pan out as he was led to believe, he said.

“It was a strange deal,” Garlits said of his 225-mile trip southeast from his base in Ocala, Florida, to the track west of Jupiter. “I thought we were going to go down there and test all afternoon. We just sat around all day. They actually just wanted one run at night. I couldn’t believe it, and they knew that we were trying to figure out some of the problems.

“It was a real strange show. It was the last show on the dragstrip. They just had a real quick little show for the night and then it was over. I was just really confused about it all.”

According to Garlits, Saturday’s fire was the last straw of a day in which nothing went as he had expected. He had just completed the burnout for his first run when smoke arose from the engine compartment. Nothing up to that point had indicated there would be an issue.

“The batteries are charged, so you just turn on the switches and the lights light up and tell you everything’s ready to go and you can step down on the throttle. It’s as simple as that. It’s a very simple operation,” Garlits said.

“I made the burnout, and at the end of the burnout, some smoke came in the (driver’s) compartment. At first I thought it was the smoke from the burnout from the tailwind, but then as I smelled it, I realized it was the battery. And by then the safety people were jerking me out of the car because they didn’t know what was going to happen. I think they thought there was going to be an explosion.”

The track’s staff was quickly on the scene with fire extinguishers and water. It took “about 10 minutes,” he said, for them to drown the flames and smoke.

“You don’t put it out,” Garlits said, “you just have to keep it cool. Just put water on it until it burns itself out and that cell releases its energy.

“It was just a terrible disappointment because I knew that was the end of our deal for now and for awhile. … The track was right on the target, they got right on it. Within 15-20 minutes they were back racing.”

Garlits said that the same batteries were used “for all the testing in the driveway” without any problems.

“We have them on a machine that shows the condition of all the cells, and they all showed good – but it wasn’t good,” he said. “No matter what the machine said, when we opened up the battery, the cell was burned up and it took out a coupla cells on each side of it. They’re like your iPhone cells.”

He pinned the blame for the fire on four of the 96 cells, which he said were manufactured in China.

“I don’t want any more of the Chinese batteries, I want something American,” he said. “There’s a guy down in Miami, a technician, that builds these batteries by hand. They’re expensive to build. I want to deal with a company. I want a battery company to get behind me that knows about batteries. They’ll know what to actually make for this motor I’ve got.”

Garlits has gone as fast as 189 mph in the dragster, and that came on July 20, 2019, at PBIR. That, he said, was pretty much the tip of the iceberg for what his latest “Swamp Rat” vehicle is capable of achieving.

“It’s so sad. When we went 189 with this car with a different drivetrain and different motor before the COVID, we only had about 80% power turned up,” he said. “The next run, we went up there and left good, spun one tire – a hub broke. We had made the hubs ourselves. They were nice; nice machine work. There was a weld on each hub putting the different splines to the piece that bolted to the wheels, and that weld failed.”

After getting back to his shop, Garlits’ detective work traced the cause of the breakage to another instance of sub-standard pieces.

“We’ve been using this real trick welding rod,” he said, noting he had used the same manufacturer’s product for many years. “It’s the finest welding rod in the world for putting together two types of steel that might be different from each other. I’ve been using it to make driveshafts, axles – everything you can think of – and never had a failure. And this weld failed.

“We came back to shop and I put a file on it and it was like butter. I called up the welding supplier, and come to find out the last batch of welding rods we bought came from China. They’d outsourced the manufacture to China. It just makes me sick inside to think that this is what’s happening.

“And this isn’t the first time this kind of crap has happened. I’ve talked to other people, they’ve sent stuff to China, and it doesn’t come back the way it was supposed to be made. … We’ve got to get some of this manufacturing brought back to this country.”

Garlits said that the setback doesn’t mean the loss of any exhibition or match races. He said he wouldn’t make plans to take the car on tour until all its development problems had been addressed and solved.

“I haven’t lined up any races until I have a nice, functional car that’s easy to maintain before I commit myself to anything like that,” he said. “That’s been my goal and I have not reached that. I’d like to go fast, but I would like to have a car you can take out there and make three runs, you don’t have any problems, you just charge the batteries and make the run.” 

Palm Beach International Raceway opened in 1964. The 149-acre facility has been sold by IRG Sports and Entertainment to a warehouse developer.

The new owner wants to build more than 2 million square feet of warehouses, but that plan was shot down earlier this month by a unanimous vote of the Palm Beach County Zoning Commission. A new hearing is set for late September.

Among the other drag racing stars in attendance at Saturday’s track finale were: five-time NHRA Top Fuel champion Joe Amato; local competitor Jerry Gwynn, whose “Baby Huey” alcohol-fueled Funny Car won an NHRA crown; and Gwynn’s son, Darrell, who captured the 1983 NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster title before embarking on a Top Fuel career that included 19 NHRA national-event wins. 

Sadly, what will likely be most remembered by those in attendance Saturday was “Big Daddy’s” dragster having a meltdown.

“Everybody was sitting there watching,” he said. “I was right on center stage, right in front of the grandstand.”

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