NASCAR safety in spotlight after Ryan Preece, Ryan Blaney crashes. What drivers said
Martin Truex Jr. was asked if he would’ve preferred being in the 12 car’s wreck or the 41 car’s wreck from Daytona last weekend — a pair of crashes that sent chills through the racing and sports world at large.
The regular season champion shrugged.
“Neither,” Truex said. “I really wouldn’t want to be in any of them, you know?”
A year ago, a group of 16 playoff drivers gathered in the Charlotte Convention Center and began sounding off on the safety shortcomings of the Next Gen car. Kevin Harvick, the sport’s voice of reason, was outspoken and assertive. So was Denny Hamlin, owner of 23XI Racing which housed Kurt Busch — the veteran who was still, at the time, trying to battle back from a concussion he sustained in a qualifying wreck.
A year later, almost on the same date and setting and circumstance, a discussion about NASCAR safety was in the spotlight again — on the heels of two scary wrecks in the high-banked, high-speeds of Daytona.
The tone was a bit different this year, though. And understandably so: Ryan Blaney sustained a head-on collision after getting spun out from the lead, and NASCAR’s softening of the front clip of the racecar was critical to Blaney’s safety. And Ryan Preece’s wreck — one that featured a remarkable amount of scary tumbles and airtime and pirouettes — was chalked up by many to be a perfect storm of uniquely unfortunate circumstances.
Even still: Those wrecks both hit close to home for the drivers.
“Certainly NASCAR has done a great job of taking those cars after crashes,” Truex said, “making changes since last year, making things better, obviously.”
Tyler Reddick, the road-course maven of 23XI Racing, was succinct in his reaction to Preece’s hit.
“It’s pretty nuts,” Reddick said. “I mean, on the chassis side of things, I honestly haven’t really dug into it too much to be honest with you. I haven’t talked to him much about it. So I guess I can’t really give a whole lot other than, outside-looking-in, he got out of the car under his own power.
“To go through that violent of an incident, and to be able to get out of the car on your own power, all things considered, it’s pretty good.”
Reddick said that it’s “hard to say” if there’s anything NASCAR should immediately do on the safety front following “one of the more insane crashes in the last 20 years,” but he added that he’s confident that the communication between the sanctioning body and the sport’s talent won’t be frayed.
“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, between NASCAR and DAC (Drivers Advisory Council), that in the coming weeks they give us a really big update of what they saw, what the car did, how it performed,” Reddick said. “NASCAR has been very open with us on a lot of things, which has been nice because you don’t feel like you have to go searching for answers.”
Was grass on Daytona’s frontstretch the issue?
William Byron had some ideas for the sport, though.
“I thought that Ryan (Blaney’s) wreck, he was obviously out of breath,” said Byron, the 25-year-old Charlotte native and series leader in wins. “But I felt like just watching his in-car, it looked a lot better than even like, let’s say, Preece’s at Talladega early in the year, like how much his head moved. And so I thought (Blaney’s) looked a lot better, like how it should. It was a huge hit, no doubt, but I think it just looks like everything was handled pretty well with the car.”
Byron went on to call Preece’s wreck a bit concerning. Upon rewatching video of the wreck, he noticed how the roof hatch “went away” — an exit for drivers in emergencies that became mandatory at all superspeedway events in 2017 — and how high the car got once it hit the grass.
“Everyone has different opinions on what the grass did in that situation,” Byron said. “Me personally? I think that he has friction on his tires on the asphalt. When he gets to the grass, that friction in the tires goes away, so I feel like that’s what kind of created that scenario.
“But we also saw Harrison (Burton) flip when the car first came out on the backstretch in the paved area (at Daytona in 2022). So I don’t know the details, but it looked like Preece didn’t have any major damage when he was sliding on the asphalt. ...
“My hope would be, ‘As quick as the tires go flat — he was like a half-second from the tires going flat — I don’t think he’s going to flip (if he continues to slide on asphalt). It’s unfortunate. I think it’s just a bad situation. But I do think the grass played a role in the friction.”
Harvick agreed with Byron.
“The grass really needs to go,” he said, adding that this has been a talking point for years when it comes to safety at superspeedways.
Harvick has been in touch with Preece every day — as a Stewart-Haas teammate, yes, but also because that’s the leader in the garage Harvick is.
“I don’t think it would’ve been the same wreck if it was not twisting and turning up in the air,” Harvick said. “Would it have taken off? Maybe. I don’t know. But it sure seems like going from asphalt to grass is what got the car going.”
Preece wreck doesn’t deter drivers
Still, though, as much as the world stopped for a moment, playoff drivers had a consequential, Labor Day trip to Darlington to prepare for.
As for Ricky Stenhouse Jr., this year’s Daytona 500 winner: Safety should be as good as it can possibly be — but also some wrecks can’t be avoided.
“I don’t know if you want to call it ‘incredible’ — you know, the series of flips without touching the ground,” Stenhouse said, “espceially when you think about a 3400-pound racecar flying through the air. So that was definitely intense. But seeing Ryan (Preece) get out and stand, and you’re like, ‘Alright, cool.’
“You know, the safety aspect of these scars is something that NASCAR looks at really hard, and we’ve changed clips because they didn’t feel like it was safe enough, and we feel comfortable about where that is.
“So as a driver, I don’t really worry too much about it. It’s just part of the game.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2023 at 2:59 PM.
