Brian Shirley Caught Up In Fiery Incident At Needmore Speedway
Brian Shirley Caught Up In Fiery Incident At Needmore Speedway
Brian Shirley emerged unharmed when his car erupted in flames at Needmore Speedway with the Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series
The freakiest occurrence of Brian Shirley’s racing career, and among the scariest Dirt Late Model incidents in recent memory, marred the final laps of Tuesday’s Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series heat race action at Needmore Speedway.
While leading the program's third and final heat, the Chatham, Ill., veteran’s car erupted in intense flames as his No. 3s Longhorn Chassis escalated into a fiery, frightening scene as he rolled to the infield. Struggling to untether from his safety equipment, Shirley was fortunate to safely exit the car with the assistance of track and series responders rushing to eventually extinguish the flames.
Miraculously enough, the 43-year-old driver not only escaped, but he was completely unscathed. His firesuit showed no ill effects from the raging fire.
“Honestly, I didn’t even realize until I saw the video how bad it was,” Shirley said. “Someone showed me a video, and it was like, ‘Phew!’ It didn’t feel like that in the car. I just kept looking, and I wasn’t in a super panic mode until the safety guys rushed over and said, ‘Get out! Get out!’ I was like, ‘Holy s---.”
Very scary situation at Needmore, and thankfully he is OK — Brian Shirley’s car just erupted in flames while leading Heat 3.
— Kyle McFadden (@ByKyleMcFadden) January 29, 2025
Never seen a car engulf in flames like that. @HuntTheFrontSDS and Needmore officials quick to the scene. Video is after he got out.
I’ll update on… pic.twitter.com/Zwoo8WU6aH
Shirley, who didn’t know what exactly led to the fire, was four laps away from a heat victory and a spot in the top-three redraw, which would’ve put him on the doorstep of his first career Georgia-Florida Speedweeks victory. A lap before his car erupted in flames, though, smoke started wafting from his race machine.
“That’s probably from where (the oil breather) was overfilled a little bit,” Shirley said. “I don’t really know truthfully what went on. We just gotta look at everything and try and figure out why it happened.”
The smoke swiftly intensified, raging into something more catastrophic in a matter of 30 seconds, the amount of time to turn two laps around the D-shaped Needmore layout.
“I don’t really know for sure. I never felt anything in the motor, like it was running fine,” Shirley said. “Then all of a sudden, it just made a weird noise and engulfed into flames. It was smoking, they said, for a couple laps. It’d been smoking out of my oil breather — like we have a tank on there that lets it smoke.
“That’s definitely a freak incident for sure. Like I said, we need to get back, diagnose what’s going on, and get back to (team owner) Bob (Cullen) to see what he wants us to do.”
Hall of Fame racer Don O’Neal, whose son Hudson O'Neal went on to win the night's $10,000 feature, said he'd never seen anything like Shirley's fire along with other bystanders who no doubt feared for the driver's safety.
Shirley said that “the 20 or 30 seconds” it took for him to emerge from the cockpit “seemed like eternity,” and that him escaping “could’ve been a situation where I needed to spend eight seconds instead of 30.”
What kept Shirley from emerging more quickly was the untethering his HANS device, the head restraint and neck support device. Thankfully for Shirley, while it took him an extra 10 or so seconds to escape safely, he “didn’t feel the heat (nor flames) or nothing” and that “everything was good."
“Truthfully, the safety equipment is what made me more nervous than anything,” Shirley said. “My HANS was getting stuck. But all my safety equipment was on point.”
In all his years of racing, Shirley hasn't had to escape a race car engulfed in flames that intensely. Shirley encourages every racer to conduct their own fire drills and practice escaping from the cockpit of their race car as quickly as possible.
“I hate to say, but that’s definitely something you should practice,” Shirley said. “That was the first time I ever did that. It’s definitely something you should evaluate. I never worry about getting out of the car, but you never get out of your car without helmet on and all that stuff.”
Shirley also commended Hunt the Front and Needmore responders for their quick reaction.
“Truthfully, really what saved me is the track having the right people,” Shirley said. “That’s the No. 1 thing. The track crew out there had the fire extinguishers and whatever they had to control it, because it could’ve gotten bad. At the end of the day, having the right personnel and the right safety people helps more than anything.”
When Shirley’s burned racer arrived back to the pits via a tow truck, one of his crew members noticed his racing seat had been scorching hot from the heat, but that Shirley’s seat inserts were unharmed.
“The seat was hot, but the pads that protected me were fine. That was awesome,” Shirley said. “Definitely the safety equipment was on point. The safety officials were on point.”
As for the remainder of Georgia-Florida Speedweeks, Shirley and Bob Cullen Racing team are tentatively preparing to soldier through the upcoming weekend's three-race Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series action at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla., with his lone remaining race car. The team hopes to receive a new car from Longhorn Chassis soon. He'll discuss plans with Bob Cullen.
“No matter what he says, if he says, ‘Hey, let’s just stick it out, or let’s go home.’ He’s in charge and I respect anything he says,” Shirley said.