NASCAR driver Daniel Suarez's car catches fire in a scary, bizarre incident

Despite some intense three-wide racing for just about the entire first stage of Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona, it wasn’t much longer after the green and white checkered flag waved to cap off Stage 1 that things got wild in a hurry for Trackhouse Racing’s Daniel Suarez.

In one of the strangest incidents I can remember since Marco Andretti’s rear axle simply fell off at Circuit of the Americas, Suarez was seen coming down the pitlane with the rear of his No. 99 Chevrolet completely engulfed in flames.

Fire is always scary, and Suarez was brave and stayed in that car way longer than most of us would have. I would’ve dropped the net and shoulder-rolled out the second I smelled smoke.

But not Suarez, he got it back to his pit box where the fire was extinguished.

However, it was so intense, it meant that his night was over much earlier than he would have probably liked, but fortunately, he has a win this season, locking him into the Playoffs.

But what was weird was that, at first, no one had any clue how the fire started. Suarez’s car was burning as he pulled into the pits, but that was almost immediately after stopping in the pits a lap earlier.

So what was it? It turns out it was the No. 11 Toyota of Denny Hamlin in the next pit stall.

As the No. 99 team was wrapping up Suarez’s stop, Hamlin was looking to exit his pit box but caught up behind Suarez.

Hamlin having to jump between the brake and loud pedal caused flames to shoot out of his car. That’s completely normal. What isn’t normal is that those flames lit some fuel on the ground in Suarez’s stall on fire.

How about that? Like I said, what a disappointing way to have to bow out, but it could be a lot worse. 

Not long after Suarez’s incident, we had the first “Big One” of the night, which ended races for a bunch of drivers including Hamlin.