In the heat of the moment at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway, Ryan Preece made his stance clear concerning the latest incident with his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.
“I’m not gonna be the one to say what happened, but it wasn’t necessary. It could have been prevented,” Preece said.
His statement came only moments after an early retirement from Sunday’s Wurth 400 — a result of the No. 41’s cockpit becoming engulfed in smoke not even 30 laps into the race.
Eventually, on lap 66, Preece pulled into the garage and finished 37th.
“I felt like I was on fire and I went the first 70 laps just trying to push through and then it got so bad that I couldn’t put my hands on the wheel. I was worried that an oil line or something would melt and then the whole car gets engulfed in fire and I don’t want to be trapped in there having that happen, so I pulled off,” Preece explained at Dover.
On Wednesday, Stewart-Haas Racing crew chief Drew Blickensderfer shed more light on the situation with Preece.
“That was self-inflicted,” said Blickensderfer, who works with driver Noah Gragson on the No. 10 car. “That was (an issue with) the bolts between the headers and the collectors keeping everything together.”
He explained the bolts were not installed correctly, which allowed the collectors to detach from the headers. From there, the collectors fell on the rocker box and began to cause a few catastrophic issues for the No. 41 team.
“It was a self-inflicted error, a little change in process that someone didn’t catch and it was close to happening on all of our cars to be honest with you. So they (Preece) were unfortunately the victim of it, but when we got back to the race shop, all of our cars were close to having a similar issue,” Blickensderfer said.
Moving forward, the remedy is simple.
“We just have to make sure we clean up our end to make sure the parts are installed correctly,” Blickensderfer said. “That (will) get rectified quickly. Everything gets torn out of our Kansas cars and fixed.”