His eyes were burning, and he had to scratch them, so Brett Butler took one hand off the steering wheel and flipped open his visor. He rubbed and rubbed, but nothing got better. In fact, things only felt like they were getting worse. The Camping World Truck Series driver didn't know at the time that the fiberglass that had gotten into his eyes was all over his gloves, too.

The rookie of the year candidate endured a painful ordeal Friday night at Nashville Superspeedway when fiberglass from a blown tire penetrated everywhere from inside the driver's compartment to inside his helmet. It all started on the very first corner of the very first lap, when the right-rear on the No. 47 truck blew, damaging crush panels and spraying fiberglass from the tire's inner liner inside the vehicle.

“

Quitting has never been an option for me in anything I do. But it was excruciating pain.

”

-- BRETT BUTLER

"It was just a domino effect of things that went wrong," said Butler, a native of Atlanta who turns 25 on Sunday. "My face was on fire. My whole body felt like it was on fire, basically. I could barely see. We had fiberglass everywhere."

Butler said fiberglass got into his ventilation system, which allowed it to get into his helmet and into his eyes. His driving suit and gloves were covered it in. The more he sweated, the more uncomfortable he became. He inadvertently made the situation worse by flipping open his visor and trying to rub his eyes.

"The fiberglass, there was so much, it looked like smoke," he said. "It looked like smoke coming out of our truck, but it really was fiberglass. And I was sitting right in the middle of it."

Immediately after the incident, Butler pitted for new tires and some basic repairs, which put him several laps down. Much of the damage was underneath the truck, he said, and couldn't have been fixed in a short period of time. So he went back out and ran the rest of the event, finishing in 32nd place, 21 laps down to winner Kyle Busch.

"Quitting was never really an option for me," he said. "I have a job to do for Rick Ware Racing and the Fuel Doctor guys. Quitting has never been an option for me in anything I do. But it was excruciating pain. It hurt real bad."

By resuming the event, he also hoped to salvage some points in the Rookie of the Year race. He left Nashville in third place, seven points behind Austin Dillon.

"Growing up, I've never been known as a quitter," said Butler, whose best finish this season was 11th at Daytona. "I felt like we could have parked it, maybe should have parked it because we were so slow. But those DNFs don't look too good when you finish the race."

Afterward Butler was taken to the track's care center, where it was determined that he had suffered some carbon monoxide poisoning because of the crush-panel breach, and was put on oxygen. Doctors gave him four rounds of eye drops to help with the fiberglass in his eyes, and picked out the small bits in his face by hand. The next day he went back to the care center, where his carbon monoxide levels were found to be back to normal.

Within a few days, he said, his eyes began to feel better. Now he's left with only a few scratches, and is ready to get back in the truck when the series resumes May 2 at Kansas Speedway.

"It was pretty sore for the moment," he said. "But it wasn't anything that was going to keep me out of the race car in a few weeks."