​Team owner Don Schumacher was on hand all day Thursday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, catching up with his drivers and crews, but the one driver he didn’t see on the opening day of testing was NAPA Dodge driver Ron Capps and the Rahn Tobler-led team. Capps reportedly was expected to be at the track here Friday, but the reason he’s not taking advantage of the PRO-hosted preseason is the hauler fire the crew encountered near Amarillo, Texas, on the way to Las Vegas earlier this week.

Schumacher explained the cause of the fire.

“Both inner tires on the left rear [of the 18-wheeler] got punctured by something. And the rear one, the tire came apart and the steel cords in it were whipping around and created a spark, caught that tire on fire. By the time they pulled over, the outer tire, which was still inflated, was on fire also. They got out of the truck to try to put the fire out with extinguishers and the outer tire exploded,” he said.

“Nobody was injured. We’ll see how things are,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of rigs go down the road for a lot of years. This is the first time we’ve had an incident like this. It’s just one of those things that happened.

“We had another rig sitting at the shop [at Brownsburg, Ind.]. It wasn’t wrapped or anything. We unloaded parts out of it. It headed to Texas to pick up all of the parts and the pieces out of that trailer. That trailer [the damaged one] will stay there until the insurance company takes a look at things and figures things out. The new rig will come to California and they’ll unload everything, clean, and sort,” Schumacher said. “Everything’s covered in soot. Everything just looks like ‘eeeh.’

“I don’t know what the insurance company will determine about the trailer,” he said.

Inside were two NAPA-branded cars. “We lost one Funny Car body,” the team owner said. “How much heat got to the chassis we don’t know at this point, how much heat got to tires. All of that will be analyzed, once they get to California and unload it and start to go through everything.”

Tobler contacted some folks who might have space for the NAPA team to function before the Winternationals that begin the season in one week.

“I’m sure everything will work out,” Schumacher said. “There were other racers who contacted me and said, ‘Hey, we have a shop here. If you need anything, bring it on over. It’s wide open, whatever you need.’ The racing industry is a great family that’s always there to try to assist each other. Chad Head [vice-president of operations at Kalitta Motorsports got hold of me and said, ‘Hey – you need a tractor-trailer? We’ve got ‘em sitting right here. No problem.’ And other people have reached out to me also. We had another rig at the shop that we just sent down the road. All of the competitors out here are staunch beat-you-up [opponents] when you come to the starting line. But pretty much any other time, they’re there to help you.”