ELECTRONIC FUELING SYSTEM?

In the Shootout there seemed to be an awful lot of fire after they wrecked. Do the drivers still have the kill switch on the steering wheel? Also does the new system add to the amount of fire we saw Saturday night? In Kevin and Michael W cars the fire didn't go out as fast as it normally did. If there had been a fire in Jeff Gordon's car that could have been disastrous. Has anyone but me thought that this might be a problem?

I remember seeing on FOX that they say the cars need a higher amount of fuel pressure than previous years. These cars now have three fuel pumps. There is one in the center of the tank, there is also one in the right rear and left rear of the fuel tank.

I actually was wondering what was up with that as well. I found this from Lee Spencer on Fox Sports:

FUELING THE FIRE

Did anyone else notice an unusual amount of fire coming from the cars on Saturday night?

Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and even race winner Kyle Busch had flames coming from their cars at times. While Gordon's wreck was more spectacular, Harvick's car became a rolling inferno on Lap 55.

"It wasn't that bad or I would have stopped," Harvick said.

That's only if Harvick's car had brakes. His spotter Billy O'Dea radioed repeatedly for Harvick to wait for the safety truck, but he kept going.

"We had a lot of fire in the No. 29," said Earnhardt Childress Racing engine builder Richie Gilmore. "Kevin couldn't get the car stopped. He had no brakes. But it was an oil fire. One thing that concerned us was whether it was a fuel fire with the fuel injection. When the car came in . . . we looked at everything, all the fuel lines -- cause now we've added 75 pounds of fuel pressure. Did the EFI (electronic fuel injection) stay on or anything like that? What's nice is when we looked at the data, everything did its job and none of the fuel lines had (broken) on the 29. It had (broken) an oil line.

"All the fire that came up on the 29 was from the oil line, and the brake line broke off. They were just shooting up underneath the car and Kevin couldn't stop."

Gilmore says EFI is safer than the old system, which had old-style fuel pumps and cables on the right side of the car.

"It has more built-in ways to shut the fuel off," Gilmore said. "When we looked at it, a piece of the suspension came up and cut the line right in half. We had six gallons of oil pumping up on the exhaust. It had nothing to do with the fuel injection."

Thanks so much Lizard! Sounds like they checked everything out and the new system is much better.

six gallons of oil? Wow!