Crew chief Drew Blickensderfer reveals Ryan Preece fire almost happened to all four Stewart-Haas cars

At Dover, Ryan Preece’s day was more or less over before it began. Drew Blickensderfer, crew chief for Noah Gragson revealed why. Preece was an early DNF in the NASCAR race.

Drew Blickensderfer works as the crew chief on the 10 car. From what he is saying, Stewart-Haas Racing almost had a catastrophic day at Dover. The Monster Mile decided to take pity on them for whatever reason.

That fire in the 41 car was caused by the collectors and headers coming apart. Then the collectors lay on the rocker box and next thing you know, smoke and then fire.

Blickensderfer says the issue was self-inflicted by Stewart-Haas Racing.

“That was self-inflicted. That was, the bolts between the headers and the collectors keeping everything together,” the crew chief said to Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “We had some issues there amongst the teams on our side. They were not installed correctly and it was allowing the collectors to [unattach] from the headers, kind of fall on that rocker box and cause an issue.

“It was a self-inflicted error that [was due to] a little change in process that someone didn’t catch. It was close to happening on all 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.”

This time, Stewart-Haas Racing got lucky. Next time, they might not be.

Stewart-Haas fixed the problem as soon as possible

During the race, I’m sure the SHR teams were nervous. Especially after the Ryan Preece incident on the track. Preece was fuming in more ways than one. His car was on fire and he was letting his team know just how upset he was over the radio.

“Obviously, that gets rectified quickly, everything gets torn out of our Kansas cars and fixed,” Blickensderfer continued. “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, and knock on wood, I think we’re in a good spot with that we just have to make sure we clean up our end, make sure the parts are installed correctly.”

Stewart-Haas Racing cannot afford any major mistakes like this. These drivers need to complete every lap, and earn every stage point, every finishing position matters. If they slip up, then they can kiss the playoffs, or even a longshot run for the playoffs, goodbye.

Going to Kansas, let’s hope that Preece and his teammates don’t have any major failures. Stewart-Haas is being counted out by many. Time for them to prove everyone wrong.