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 disattached from the headers, kind of fall on that rocker box and cause an issue.
— Racer —