Nearly two weeks after a horrifying fire engulfed the race car of Simona de Silvestro during an IZOD IndyCar Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, the Indy Racing League is blaming a mishandled safety response on "human error."A review of safety procedures from the incident at Texas -- it took nearly 40 seconds for safety workers to start extinguishing the flames and begin freeing de Silvestro from her car -- have revealed a "procedural error in the packing of a fire hose" on one of the response trucks and also a "breakdown in Safety Team protocol" in its response, the IRL said in a statement.
"What happened at Texas was a a result of human error and we will work diligently to prevent this in the future,'' said Brian Barnhart, president of competition and racing operations for the IRL.
De Silvestro suffered minor burns on her right hand in the incident.
Video of the incident clearly shows a malfunction of a fire hose in the safety team's first response to the accident. As workers are frantically trying to pull de Silvestro from her blazing car, they ultimately end up using fire extinguishers from a second truck that arrived on scene moments later.
The IRL immediately conducted a review of the incident and determined the fire hoses were packed improperly following a routine test just prior to the race start meant to ensure the hoses were working.
"There was an error in the re-packing of the hose after the test, which caused it to malfunction,'' said Mike Yates, track safety manager for the IRL. "We are modifying hoses on all the trucks beginning this weekend in Iowa to prevent this from happening again.''
The IRL's Safety Team is regarded as the standard in the industry and consists of 24 personnel per event, including trauma physicians, paramedics and firefighter/EMTs.
"Our Safety Team is at the forefront of motorsports safety and over the years has set a very high standard in its response to all on-track incidents,'' Barnhart said. "We are always continually looking for ways to improve the way we operate.. ... the safety of our teams, drivers and officials on the racetrack remains our number one priority.''
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