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JR Motorsports driver Brandon Jones' outing in the ToyotaCare250 NASCAR Xfinity race at Richmond Raceway was cut short by a mechanical failure. His #9 Chevy Camaro erupted into flames on the first stage of the race.
Jones qualified on the front row alongside pole sitter Parker Retzlaff. The duo led the pack to the green flag but lost positions and were dueling for a top five position when the incident occurred.
Brandon Jones spun around while making a move on Retzlaff, when his #9 Chevy suffered a drivetrain failure. The car kept spewing oil on the track as it spun around in Turn One and eventually hit the outside barriers.
Watch the initial incident in the video below:
After rolling down to the apron, Brandon Jones attempted to restart his car causing his #9 Chevy Camaro to erupt into flames, due to oil leaking from the front left side. The flames quickly engulfed the front end of the car, forcing Jones to retire from the race.
Watch Jones' #9 Chevy erupt into flames in the below video:
This marked the second mechanical failure in the first stage, after Ryan Vargas in the #32 Jordan Anderson Racing Chevy blew his engine. Blaine Perkins also stalled his #29 RSS Racing Ford later in the first stage of the NASCAR Xfinity event.
Aric Almirola won the first stage, with Brennan Poole, Corey Heim, Justin Allgaier, Sam Mayer rounding out the top five finishers.
Brandon Jones speculates on the possible reason behind the mechanical failure
After retiring from the event, Brandon Jones told the media that the drivetrain on his #9 Chevy Camaro kept shaking and locking up moments before he spun out of the race. Jones explained that the car caught fire due to an oil line leakage on the front left side.
He told Fox Sports reporter Bob Pockrass:
"It is kind of hard to process at once, when it happened. Got into [Turn] three and pretty much the whole drivetrain kept shaking and locking up really hard and then I spun. That's just oil blowing all over the track."
"It was weird because it would start back up but then I tried to come back to pit road but obviously fire blew out the left side. So its gotta be an oil line spraying on the headers or something to cause that fire. I don't know didn't get much of a warning, expect for when I got into [Turn] one and the drivetrain started to shake really bad."
Despite the DNF, Brandon Jones was happy with his speed, having started the race on the front row. Jones recorded three top-10 results in the first seven rounds of the season, and his first retirement at Richmond Raceway.
