| | | | | |  | | CIA Stock Photo | Darby said "multiple teams" found water, a day after Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin and Bill Davis Racing's Dave Blaney had their performance impacted by the fuel mixture at Atlanta Motor Speedway. | | | | WATER DOESN'T COMBUST | More evidence of water in fuel systems from Atlanta race | |
| | By SceneDaily Staff HAMPTON, GA. -- More teams - including Pep Boys Auto 500 winner Jimmie Johnson - have found water contamination in their fuel systems as they have torn down their cars back at the shop today, NASCAR Nextel Cup Series Director John Darby said Monday afternoon.
Darby said "multiple teams" found water, a day after Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin and Bill Davis Racing's Dave Blaney had their performance impacted by the fuel mixture at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
Blaney's car stalled during the race, while Hamlin's failed to come up to speed on a restart with three laps remaining, resulting in Martin Truex Jr. ramming Hamlin from behind to start a multicar melee. Both were found to have a significant amount of water in their fuel systems.
Most of the other teams with water had less than a tablespoon of water contamination in their fuel filter, which typically holds a pint or quart of fuel, Darby said. That likely wouldn't impact the performance of the car.
Darby wouldn't indicate how many teams had evidence of water but said NASCAR has also asked all Craftsman Truck Series teams to check their fuel filters and fuel cells.
The water is a brown color and not clear, Darby said.
The Sunoco underground tanks at the track showed no evidence of water from daily tests nor electronic sensors used to detect contamination.
"If you look from the path the fuel takes from there to ultimately the gas can or the tank of the car, ... you've got plumbing that connects the underground tank to the fuel pump [at the fueling station] and you've got the fuel pump itself," Darby said. "So that's where the investigation is going on now because it appears what's in the ground in the tanks is very clean and uncontaminated."
Darby said there have been no problems during the car of tomorrow test at Atlanta today, indicating the water issue might have actually started Friday.
"The bandit has come and gone," he said. "We're pumping out of the same pumps today as we did yesterday with no issue. ... What our suspicions are is that some of the very early gasoline that was pumped out as early as Friday morning could have been where the contamination [was]."
One team that it was speculated had a problem was the Dale Earnhardt Inc. team of Dale Earnhardt Jr., whose car didn't come up to speed at the start of the race.
Crew chief Tony Gibson didn't think he could blame the issue on water but he said he wasn't positive and would continue investigating when he gets back to the shop.
"I don't think it had anything to do with water, to be honest with you," Gibson said Monday afternoon. "Our deal is a carburetion [issue being] too rich at the start, a low RPM deal and it doesn't accelerate at the start.
"Two weeks in a row, we've done the same thing. Martinsville, when he hit the gas, there was nothing there. It was like burning coal. I can't believe it happened twice in a row. We worked hard on the chassis dyno and thought we had it figured out in practice."
Darby said he doesn't expect to have any problems this weekend at Texas.
"We're very confident going forward to Texas and the rest of the year, there won't be any issues," Darby said. "Sunoco will continue to monitor and perform all the testing procedures that they do at an event to insure the fact that the fuel is pure."
Darby once again dismissed any talk of sabotage.
"There's enough teams from enough different manufacturers, enough different contaminations, enough different everything - that if it was sabotage, it's got to be somebody who hates NASCAR racing across the board," Darby said.
| | Posted October 30, 2007 , 2:54 pm EST
Last Updated October 30, 2007 , 2:54 pm EST | | | | | | | | | | |
