NASCAR Driver Runs Circles Under Red to Put Out Unseen Fire

Brad Keselowski was leading Saturday's NASCAR Cup Series race at Daytona when a red flag came out. Normally, a driver will just stop on track and wait for the red to be lifted before moving for any reason. Keselowski, instead, chose to do some very slow circles in the infield.

The RFK Racing driver and co-owner later shared on Twitter that he was circling under caution in an attempt to dissipate smoke from an unseen fire, one that he reported feeling in the car's footwell while stopped. The onboard video of his car does not show a fire, but, as he noted, what looks like smoke can be seen dissipating from the cabin over the 90 seconds of his bonus track time.

With no fire actually visible—and no clear reason why driving around in slow circles would help with a small interior fire in the first place—competitors mostly watched from afar with confusion. In a clip shared on Twitter, Alex Bowman shared over the radio that he wished he could've shared the moment to his Instagram story. Unfortunately for Bowman's social feeds, NASCAR drivers have been banned from using their phones in cars since the last time Brad Keselowski had a fire-related adventure on the Daytona backstretch.

Whether or not those extra loops put out a fire, Keselowski went on to push teammate Chris Buescher to his third win of the season. It may have looked ridiculous, but, as he said, it's not dumb if it works.

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