NASCAR Officials Come Clean on Daytona Grass Patch Asphalt Repave With Surprising Revelation

The talk around Ryan Preece‘s hair-raising crash at Daytona’s season finale was deafening. His #41 Ford took a wild ride, flipping over more than a dozen times before finally coming to a halt. Miraculously, Ryan Preece emerged from the wreckage unscathed and walked away, though he did spend a night in the hospital for a thorough once-over, just to play it safe.

This bone-chilling incident got the whole racing community talking, especially about why there’s a patch of grass right next to the track. The chatter was spearheaded by Denny Hamlin, with Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Kenny Wallace, Dale Earnhardt Jr, and even NASCAR’s behind-the-scenes folks like Brett Griffin weighing in. This whole bunch of conversation has seemingly lit a fire under the powers that be, prompting them to take steps to prevent such heart-stopping moments in the future.

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Denny Hamlin kicked off a crucial conversation following Ryan Preece’s terrifying tumble at Daytona, where his car danced a dangerous ballet across the track. Hamlin pointed to the moment Preece’s ride leaped, thanks to the infamous “grassgate,” setting off a frightening series of flips.

Chiming in, Kyle Busch highlighted the hazards when speed meets grass, comparing a racing car’s aerodynamics to a “sheet of plywood” caught in the wind, questioning the logic of grassy run-offs. Kevin Harvick, from Tony Stewart’s camp, also sang from the same hymn sheet as Busch.

Diving deep, NASCAR reenacted the crash scene and pinpointed the road course’s bus stop chicane and the grassy backstretch as the culprits for the car’s lift-off and subsequent gymnastics. And it’s technical too: a NASCAR car hurtling at 180 mph packs the same punch as 2.2 lbs of TNT. That’s a colossal amount of energy to tame, mostly reined in by friction’s grip. Being spun out at that speed, mashing the brakes to a halt—it’s friction that plays hero—always pushing back, no matter which way you’re headed, and grass does not have that level of friction at all.

So, now the NASCAR plan is set to swap out three grassy patches for asphalt, one’s already done, and the other two are on the docket post-Daytona 500. “With the incident, we had with the 41 car at Daytona II, we have, you see in yellow there, re-asphalted that area,” Sawyer explained as per sportsnaut.com, shedding light on the decision-making and timing during a media briefing at their R&D hub. “Post Daytona 500, we will asphalt the green area.”

“The reason is working within our off-season and with our friends at IMSA (for the Rolex 24). It will be done post-Daytona 500. As well as the rumble strips that are there on the bus stop today, they will be removed, as will the concrete pads, which will give us the opportunity to, similar to what we do at Circuit of the Americas, take different rumble strips and interchange them.”

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“If we want to go flat in that area, we can do that. It gives us some options. It gives us a few cards to play with,” Sawyer added, hinting at a smoother future for that stretch. Moreover, NASCAR’s not stopping there; they’re already on the case, tackling the backstretch issues head-on to keep such heart-stoppers off other tracks as well.

Ryan Preece has had his fair share of heart-stopping moments on the track

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Last April at Talladega, things got hairy when Ross Chastain decided to carve out a third lane, setting off a chain reaction. His car ricocheted off Noah Gragson, who was sent packing into the wall, igniting the chaos. Kyle Larson found himself skidding on the grass, only to be hurled back into the fray and into the path of Preece, whose helmet visor flew open upon impact.

“It was probably one of the toughest hits I’ve ever taken in a race car, and I’ve hit walls with hung throttles on concrete, concrete walls with dirt behind them,” Preece shared until Daytona turned the tables yet again.

But Sawyer’s on that as well, saying, “In general, we’ve had conversations over time about grassy areas. Talladega on the backstretch was an area that we’ve looked at. John Patalak and his team worked extensively on that.”

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He shed some light on how the rumble strips played a role, something they picked up from the car data during the Daytona crash analysis. He delved into the nitty-gritty of their findings – how grass, rather than slowing things down, tends to make a car that’s airborne flip more fiercely. “We put all those together to reach this decision.”