Preece fire was a ‘self-inflicted’ error by the team

The fire in Ryan Preece’s Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Dover Motor Speedway was the result of a mistake by the No. 41 team.

Drew Blickensderfer, who is the crew chief of the No. 10 team for Preece’s teammate Noah Gragson, explained there were bolts that were not installed correctly. Preece retired from the Wurth 400 after 66 laps because of smoke in the cockpit that the team was unable to diagnose or fix on the spot.

“That was self-inflicted,” Blickensderfer said. “That was the bolts between the headers and the collectors keeping everything together. We had some issues there amongst the teams on our side. 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.”

Preece was the first driver out of Sunday’s race and finished last in 37th position. Chase Briscoe finished 19th, Josh Berry finished 14th, and Blickensderfer guided Gragson to a sixth-place finish.

A frustrated Preece said on Sunday that the issue could have been prevented and was unnecessary, although he didn’t go into specifics at the time.

“They (the 14 team) 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. “So obviously that gets rectified quickly. Everything gets torn out of our Kansas cars and fixed. I think NASCAR has done a good job. I think us as a group, because it was more relevant for us last year or the year before, we’ve taken a lot of effort to keep that from happening.