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Ryan Preece’s day ended early at Dover Motor Speedway, finishing in a disappointing P37 place. His #41 Morton Building Ford had to bow out after just 66 laps due to a fire. The finish marked his seventh last-place finish in the Cup Series and the fourth fire-related dropout across NASCAR’s top tiers for this car. Overall, it was the 60th time the #41 has failed to finish a race, 4th from fire, and the 1,034th for a Ford in NASCAR. 

The incident actually brought back some old memories and concerns, echoing the early days of the Next Gen cars when several Fords encountered safety foam fires. Kevin Harvick initially pointed fingers at faulty car parts for these fires. However, now, Tony Stewart’s insider has offered a different perspective that challenges Harvick’s explanation.

Blickensderfer on Kevin Harvick’s claim 

Back in September 2022, Kevin Harvick had to ditch his burning ride mid-race, a scary scene that ended with his car engulfed in flames, which he blamed on “crappy-ass” parts during a fiery interview. Fast forward, and Ryan Preece’s car faced a similar fiery fate, not once but twice, prompting Harvick to repeat his earlier criticism about the quality of parts.

He said, “I’m sure it’s just crappy parts on the race car like we’ve seen so many times. They haven’t fixed anything. It’s kind of like the safety stuff. We just let it keep going and keep going.” But Drew Blickensderfer, the current crew chief for the #10 team, recently stepped in to set the record straight. Contradicting Harvick’s harsh words, Blickensderfer explained that the fires weren’t caused by faulty parts at all. “That was self-inflicted,” he stated, pointing towards other factors at play rather than a part failure.

“That was the bolts between the headers and the collectors keeping everything together. They were not installed correctly and it was allowing the collectors to come dis-attached from the headers, kind of fall on that rocker box and cause an issue. So, 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. They 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. So obviously that gets rectified quickly. Everything gets torn out of our Kansas cars and fixed.”

Rather, Blickensderfer defended NASCAR, emphasizing that the parts supplied to teams weren’t to blame for recent car fires. He gave props to NASCAR, saying, “I think NASCAR has done a good job.” But officially, NASCAR listed Ryan Preece’s exit from the race as due to “safety” reasons, a reason that Kevin Harvick also mentioned. Both NASCAR.com and racing-reference.info marked it as a “fire.”

In fact, caught up in the garage, Ryan Preece himself steered clear of pinpointing exactly what sparked the blaze but highlighted the risk it posed, potentially reaching the oil line. However, he did not back out from expressing his frustration over the situation, emphasizing how needless it was and his sole motive to not get stuck in there.

Ryan Preece didn’t hold back his disappointment, either

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Last year at Daytona, Ryan Preece’s car barrel-flipped, but he chalked it up to race contact and the infamous grassy track edges, still supporting his team through the ordeal. This time, though, his frustration was palpable.

It seemed the issue was much more risky. Preece shared, “I felt like I was on fire. 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.“ The smoke first seeped into his cockpit around Lap 60, prompting him to pit under green as his crew extinguished the initial fire. However, the smoke returned, forcing him back to the pits and eventually to the garage.

Just after a few laps, the situation deteriorated again, and his crew had to radio out to Tony Stewart and Co., “Tony, Mark, we’re done. That melted all the door foam, and we can’t run without any foam in it.” After a brief attempt to fix the issue, the team decided to park the car rather than risk further danger, ending their day prematurely.