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Craig Sullivan, driving for team owner Mark Woodruff, suffered a fiery crash in round two of Radials vs. the World racing, late on Saturday afternoon at South Georgia Motorsports Park. Fortunately, the Plainfield, IN-based driver was uninjured in the accident, but the supercharged ’69 Camaro he was piloting sustained heavy damage to its front and right side.

 

While running in the right lane against Norm Bryson’s Corvette, Sullivan left first with an excellent .003 reaction time, but by the time he was about 200 feet out, the nose of his orange Camaro started rising skyward until Sullivan pedaled and brought the car back on track in a shower of sparks.

 

It initially looked like Sullivan would gather the car up and coast down track while Bryson streaked to the win, but the car remained unsettled, hunting the centerline until taking an abrupt right turn toward the wall just as it crossed the eighth-mile finish line.

 

Sullivan later said he wasn’t sure if a tie rod may have been damaged  from the wheelstand’s landing. Regardless, the car drove nearly head on into the concrete wall lining the SGMP track and flames immediately began licking the air from its hood area.

 

“The fuel tank is up there (at the front of the car), so that’s probably what started the fire,” Sullivan suggested. “Once it hit the wall I just turned into it because I really wasn’t sure at that time where Norman was on the track.”

 

Bryson was long gone, coasting with his parachutes out in the shutdown area, but Sullivan’s troubles were starting to mount as his ride ground to a halt against the right-side wall. 

 

“I could see fire under the hood scoop, so I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and went to pull the handle, but it didn’t come out. So I pulled harder and it bent the bracket, so I reached over with my other hand, too, to grab the bracket, but it still wouldn’t come out. So that’s when I decided to just bail out of the car. It was all very calm, though. Almost like slow motion, never any panic,” he said.

 

When Woodruff made his way back to the team’s combined pit space after falling to Mo Hall in the Pro 275 third round, he helped with getting Sullivan’s car off a flatbed carrier, then casually covered the wrecked Camaro with a car cover.

 

“We’ll look at it tomorrow and see how bad it is,” Woodruff said. “Hopefully it’s not as bad as it looks, but this is the business we’re in. Things like this are going to happen every now and then. Just glad Craig is okay and we’ll see if we can fix it.”