Watch: Dad rushes onto racetrack and saves son as car erupts into flames
Some days, a parent has to crawl through the fires of hell itself to save his or her child, and the best of them willingly do so with their own safety a secondary concern if it’s a concern at all.
Enter Dean Jones, whose son Mike was involved in a race at South Boston Speedway in Virginia on Saturday night.
Mike’s car burst into flames at the NASCAR Late Model 100, and against the backdrop of the inky Virginia night, the fire burned in spectacular fashion.
Dean, seeing this, grabbed the chance to seal up the Father of the Year award on the eve of Father’s Day.
He took off like he’d been shot out of a rifle, reaching the car before even the track safety crews did and pulling his son out of harm’s way as the professionals arrived, extinguished the flames and did their best to salvage the twisted wreckage of a car that looked like it had crossed paths with a particularly ornery dragon.
Anyone who’s played a video game like Grand Theft Auto or Fallout knows that as soon as a car is on fire, it is only a matter of time before it explodes.
As the car burned, it looked like fuel leaked out of a fuel line onto the track, taking a line of fire with it like a blazing octopus extending a fiery tentacle from its body.
Finally, right at the end of the clip, you can see a massive fireball erupt as a critical mass of fuel vapor reached ignition.
And even with fire safety suits and all that other protective gear issued to race car drivers, Mike Jones would’ve been barbecued had his father not pulled him to a safe distance.
As Dean Jones told NBC News, “I just had a single focus: Get my son out of that burning car. Nothing else mattered.”
Father pulls son from burning car after dramatic racetrack crash.
@Miguelnbc has more. pic.twitter.com/NL27fqwazU
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) June 21, 2018
The car itself spun out after some aggressive side-to-side contact with another car on the track; while “rubbin’ is racin’” especially at the lower levels of the sport, once a car starts to get sideways, everything … well, it goes sideways.
And then the laws of physics take over, a car travels in this new involuntarily cornered direction, and wham — say hello to the wall.
Of course, that didn’t stop the momentum of the car itself, which dragged metal and kicked up a ton of sparks, and when burning sparks meet exhaust and gasoline fumes from a damaged engine and fuel tank, that’s when the pyrotechnics start.
Everyone was lucky this time and nobody was seriously hurt.
And that’s due in no small part to a true hero … and a fantastic dad.
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