Brett Fifield battled for fourth when things went awry. His car blazed on fire during the dirt stock feature at Bear Ridge Speedway in Bradford, Vermont.
“I felt a couple of thumps coming from the back of my car,” said Fifield, of West Fairlee, Vermont. “I didn’t know I was on fire until I was going down the frontstretch and noticed a glow on the wall alongside my car.”
Fifield headed for the infield. He prepared for a fire by wearing a G-Force Racing Gear fire suit and an Impact Racing helmet.
“I shut down my car and got out as fast as I could,” Fifield said. “The track crew was really quick. They put out the fire as I climbed out the window.”
Afterwards, Fifield diagnosed the cause of the blaze.
“One of the bearings in the rear end let go,” said Fifield, who operates an auto repair business. “That leaked gear oil, and the friction inside the rear end caused heat, which ignited the oil.”
Prior to the fire, Fifield felt good in his car.
“Before that happened, everyone was running the bottom of the track,” Fifield said. “So, I took the outside groove and my car stuck. It felt good up there, and I ran the best I did all season.”
Fifield won’t return to the oval track this weekend because it’s fair season.
“We already pulled the small-block Chevy from the stock car and put it into our pulling truck,” said Fifield. “We’re into two-wheel-drive truck pulling. We have a ’95 S-10 3/4 pickup that now has a great motor. We’ll be at the [Caledonia County Fair in] Lyndonville [Vermont] this week and the Lancaster Fair [in New Hampshire] the following week.”
After that, Brett Fifield intends to return the engine to the dirt stock.
“We’ll look for another nine-inch Ford rear end in the meantime,” Fifield said. “If the Bear Ridge Speedway season ends by then, we’ll be back next year.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
