Three out of four drivers under Tony Stewart’s care have got tickets to their future NASCAR homes. The dark cloud that hovers over the Stewart-Haas Racing team has dissipated a lot, but not entirely. One SHR driver is still mired in uncertainty and now track woes are piling on his misery. The Brickyard 400 race ensued with a ton of wrecks, and Ryan Preece was entangled in one of them.

Preece’s races are also on a drab streak – he grabbed his lone top-five finish at Nashville a few weeks ago. Now the NASCAR community is annoyed at him for spurring one of the biggest crashes in Indianapolis. However, the SHR driver recently released his side of the story.

Ryan Preece shrugs off blame for Brickyard chaos

A lot of crashes riddled the Cup Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But the lap 75 fiasco looked most aggressive. Ryan Preece spun off a wreck collecting William Byron, Harrison Burton, and AJ Allmendinger. The incident battered William Byron’s race violently. This season’s three-time winner could not add to HMS’ glorious number of having the most wins (11) on the track. And all eyes were on Preece for causing this trouble.

However, Ryan Preece believes it is not entirely his fault. On a SiriusXM NASCAR Radio clip, he explained some technical issues that he faced. “At that point in time, you can set you know, 15, 20, 25% – whatever the reason, it was weird. Chase Briscoe ran out of fuel earlier this year at Nashville and something that he said was that a wide open throttle, the motor would fall out of place, and die. But at 20-30%, you can get it running. Well, that was what happened.”

After Chase Briscoe’s No. 14 Ford got tight exiting Turn 2, it stacked up those behind him and caused a chain reaction. This prompted Ryan Preece to sandwich himself between Byron and Burton, but that took the latter two out. Preece tried to act on his mentor’s advice, but that fell through as well. “Tony had said that, Hey, they’re trying to get to the white. See if you can get out of the way. So I tried throwing it in reverse to back myself up toward the wall and off the racetrack, but it just died. So that was kind of…all those things happening in a span of ten seconds which felt like minutes.”

The intensity of the wreck shattered William Byron’s chances completely, as the Hendrick Motorsports driver ended in 38th. Ryan Preece, on the other hand, could merely advance from his 31st spot to a 26th-place finish. However, despite NASCAR fans calling out Preece for the fiasco, William Byron believed the culprit was different. Even AJ Allmendinger blamed an entirely different cause for the wreck.

Rivals deflect the blame from Preece

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From one angle, Chase Briscoe’s tight racing caused the lap 75 wreck. But from another, Ryan Preece’s No. 41 Ford initiated contact between the drivers, bumping into Burton’s back right tire and causing the ensuing chain reaction. However, William Byron chose to believe the first story. He said Briscoe was making “crazy” moves once lap 74 began, and added: “The No. 14 was just being a squirrel back in the pack. He drove up in front of me. I had to lift way off the corner and I got run over.” Byron was even more dejected because he started 4th in NASCAR’s return to the crown jewel Brickyard 400 race.

AJ Allmendinger had a different story to blame. The lap 74 restart was issued due to a multiple-lap caution being issued after Cody Ware’s shedding tire debris. Allmendinger claimed these restarts can be the most prone to wrecks, as most cars in the middle or back of the field will drive more aggressively in order to make up lost track position. So he did not find it surprising, summing up his experience, he said: “Kind of the story of the year: wrong place, wrong time.”

So although Ryan Preece received blows from the NASCAR community, his competitors do not blame him. Yet the SHR driver needs to get on a war footing to set his race records straight.