Originally Posted by Tage
Day 1, Sunday April 3

I am a fan of "Time Attack" type competitions so yes I definitely practiced my exits until I felt comfortable that it might one day save my life. My long time "racing" mentor Paul Bloomberg once told me that he could exit his car in "2 seconds". Initially I thought to myself that is BS and blew it off as if it was a "fish story" and an exaggeration. However, the more I practiced the more I realized you *can* do it in about "2 seconds" with the right car and/or setup and a little practice.

Sat night was the closest call with death I have ever had and I hope none of you ever experience anything similar to what happened to me. I can without a doubt GUARANTEE you that if I took the time allowed by the CCRs (10 seconds out the door and 15 seconds out the window) to exit my vehicle, I would most certainly be dead today.

Initially there was a puff of white smoke. No big deal, I just figured I blew up yet another engine so I lifted off the gas. About a half second later, I saw in my peripheral vision a small flame pop up in the passenger area. About a half second after that, the flame got a LOT bigger and I started to pat myself on the back for buying the biggest fire system available. Before my hand even reached the fire system pull cord, the entire cab was filled with DARK black smoke and bright orange flames completely around me.

People talk about how hot Arizona is in the Summer. Boy, let me tell you about some heat! This wasn't just really hot, it was "pure pain". This was excruciating pain I never thought possible to experience w/o dying almost instantly. The thought of that moment actually brings tears to my eyes as I type this out because all I could think about was the fact that I was goig to die and I wasn't ready to leave behind my wife and two young kids.

I don't know how my brain was able to function under those conditions but I figured I had to try vs just give up. I'm sure some of you might be thinking they would never give up but this heat was so intense I seriously couldn't think straight. I didn't think the fire system worked because there was absolutely ZERO relief for me but from what some folks told me, the fire was put out for a short amount of time but then sprung right back up so perhaps it did and bought me a couple extra seconds. Those seconds which likely helped saved my life as well.

I was going pretty fast too when this happened. Well over 100MPH as estimated based on the fact that I just shifted into 5th gear and I usually run the car up to 100MPH in 4th gear. I told several visitors today it was a little over 100MPH but I forgot that I was running a much taller tire when this happend so it wouldn't surprise me if I was closer to 105-110MPH. The long story short is my car stops pretty well, but when your interior is a raging inferno it seems like it takes a "lifetime" to slow down, especially when your brain has other things to perform besides just threshold braking.

At this point I have my eyes closed and I am holding my breath and hoping that I'm driving in a somewhat straight line and jamming on the binders while trying to drop my window net (which I defintely struggled with a bit more than during any of my "2-3 second" ideal practice runs). I recall still going extremely fast but thinking "I can't take it any longer and I have to get out of here at all costs". I went to stick my head out the window but I couldn't because I forgot to unlatch my harness. EPIC Fail!! Luckily I was able to find the harness release and unlatch myself with lightening speed and get my head out the window while still braking. I must have jerked the steering wheel when pushing myself out because the car went into a slide at this point and I went to jump out the window. Somehow my thigh got caught on the window opening and instead of diving out the window cleanly, my leg(s) stopped me short and my body went straight towards the gound. Somehow I managed to get my hands out and use them to "run" my body along the pavement while I untangled my legs/feet from the window opening (window net???) and the car swung around. My own car barely missed crushing me before impacting the wall. Whew! Extremely disoriented and knowing I could still be in harms away I saw a wall the jumped over it.

Next I managed to run to my dually which was the first support vehicle on scene and grab a 20# fire extinguisher to get the car fire put out about 90+%.

Wow... just, wow... I am in total disbelieve at this point that I made it out. Sure I made a few mistakes but after reviewing the video multiple times from the time I figured out there was a fire and going ~105MPH to the time I was completely out of the car was about 8 seconds. I have 1st and 2nd degree burns on my face and 3rd degree burns on the back of my neck. I assume that 4th degree equals dead so thankfully I wasn't in the car one millisecond longer!

The one thing I did wrong was NOT put on my balaclava. That was simple stupidity on my part and my injuries would likely be a lot less or just minor had I took the additional time to put it on (you know how things go when you're rushing around though right?). The CCRs state it's not required (unless you have facial hair) but these are so inexpensive it's doesn't make sense to not force them to be worn all the time since you never know when something like this will happen. I'm actually requesting that the CCRs going forward require this vs the language that is used which is along the lines of highlighy recommended or something like that. FYI - The fire suit and recently upgraded Carbon X socks, SFI shoes, etc. all worked flawlessly!

I'll see if I can figure out how to post the videos (from the hospital) as they are extremely eye opening and will hopefully get many of you to go out and buy more/better safety gear vs those lighter weight wheels you've been eye'ing for a while now.