Twin-Supercharged Ferrari 599 Catches Fire in Formula Drift Debut Event
Driver Federico Sceriffo had terrible luck in the first round of the 2018 Formula Drift season.
Last week, The Drive
broke news about Federico Sceriffo and his team FFF Drifting Department's Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano based drift car. Sadly, in its debut race in the Formula Drift series during the first round at Long Beach, the car has suffered extensive damage from a major front-end fire.
The fire occurred during Run 2 of Sceriffo and Chelsea DeNofa's Top 32 battle. At the beginning of the first turn of the run, Sceriffo's Ferrari drift car went straight into the tire wall. The cameras followed DeNofa who was able to continue his run without issue, but when the cameras panned to the Ferrari it was already ablaze with Sceriffo attempting to exit the car. Sceriffo exited the car and attempted to direct the nearest official to do something to stop the fire.
It might be me, but from the footage, the official seems to give a "yeah, yeah, calm down" hand motion which any driver would ignore. Sceriffo not wanting to watch his race car go completely up in flames at its debut race then tries to enter the passenger side door. I assume he was attempting to turn off anything which could continue the fire.
Eventually, safety vehicles arrive to extinguish the fire while Sceriffo paced around the fire.
The Maximum Driftcast podcast crew of Corey Hosford, Sam Nalven, and Paco Ibarra ran the AEM Induction Systems halftime show. The trio reported that they spoke with Sceriffo and he was very positive after the incident and that he has no doubt the team will get the fire damage sorted.
Sceriffo jumped to social media to describe what he thought caused it. "I probably cracked my upper arm that broke completely when I was initiating when leading, the front left wheel when I hit the wall destroyed my protection of the fuel line and ripped off a hose..." Sceriffo said. "Fiorella (the Ferrari drift car's nickname) will be back, more cool, more strong, and ready to work and do her job again soon. I never give up."