Jeff Gordon crew catches low-octane fuel issue Friday at Infineon
Jeff Gordon's crew refuels his car at Infineon Raceway. The team accidentally got some low-octane fuel in its tank Friday. // Chuck Yadmark, NASCAR Illustrated
SONOMA, Calif. – Jeff Gordon’s Hendrick Motorsports team avoided potential damage to its engine Friday when crewmen discovered lower-octane gasoline in its fuel cans during the day’s first practice session at Infineon Raceway.
The discovery was made when the team was topping off the No. 24 Chevrolet after Gordon had made brief runs early in the day’s lone practice. Once the team realized the gasoline going into the car didn’t have the expected bluish-green tint, crewmen alerted officials to the problem. That fuel was then drained from the car and replaced.
“They had made three different runs yesterday in practice and then came into the garage to switch over to qualifying trim, to make some qualifying runs,” Jeff Andrews, head of engine development for Hendrick Motorsports, said Saturday. “When they added fuel to the car to top the car back off, … they noticed that in the overflow tube, which is a clear tube that goes to the back of the car, the fuel did not have any color – it was clear, basically transparent. Our normal fuel kind of has a bluish-green tint to it.
“At that time, we stopped … we went and got someone from NASCAR immediately and pointed it out. Made sure they got a sample of it and at that time we pumped all of that fuel out of the car, went down and put some fresh fuel in it, as well as dumped the fuel that was in the cans.”
NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said officials checked every car in the garage after the Gordon issue was brought to their attention, but found no other problems.
In addition to racing fuel, Infineon Raceway’s tanks also contain lower-octane gas that can be used to fuel track vehicles. Track officials said Saturday that officials with Sunoco, the official fuel supplier for NASCAR, take control of the pumps a day before the track opens.
In most cases, any pumps that dispense lower-octane fuel at a track are locked so that that fuel is not accidentally provided to competitors.
Andrews said the team never made it out on the track with the lower-octane fuel. Such gasoline, he said, raised some concern initially.
“Yeah, we had concern, but naturally … assuming it was something of a lower octane level, a lower grade fuel, which is how it was explained to me by NASCAR, yeah, it could have been damaging had we used it,” he said.
Teams arrive at the track for race weekends with empty fuel cells and gas cans. The cars are fueled while going through the inspection process prior to practice and only after the fuel cells have been inspected.
The fuel that was added at that time, Andrews said, “looked normal.”
“In the meantime, [the] truck driver, or whoever, on the team goes through their normal duty of taking fuel cans down to have them filled up for their upcoming practice,” he said. “It was only during the time at which fuel was added to the car after those three initial practice runs that it was discovered something was different.”
Andrews said the Gordon team “was the only team in our camp that we know of, for sure, that had that issue.”
