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Fire Causes Damage To JGR Engine Room


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The engine room at Joe Gibbs Racing suffered damage from smoke and water after local firefighters were called out to extinguish a blaze that broke out in the team's engine dynamometer Friday morning.

The fire started at about 9 a.m. ET, a team spokesperson said, and members of the Huntersville (N.C.) Fire Department put it out. The blaze was not caused by an explosion, the spokesperson added, and there were no injuries. The fire was quickly contained and employees were let back into the building about 45 minutes later.

Joe Gibbs Racing, which fields the Sprint Cup cars of Denny Hamlin, Kyle Busch and Joey Logano, employs more than 400 people in its facility north of Charlotte. It is the only Toyota-backed NASCAR program that builds its own engines on site.

The Gibbs spokesman said the exact cause of the fire was still being investigated, and that the blaze would not affect the organization's preparations for the Daytona 500.