NASCAR VP Scott Miller says 'a lot of work going on' to solve the fire issue that seems to be affecting Fords the most.
- “To say that NASCAR didn’t care (about the Darlington fires) is about as far from the truth as you could get,” Scott Miller, the organization’s senior vice-president of competition, said on a Tuesday morning.
- Driver Kevin Harvick lashed out at NASCAR—but not calling out Miller personally—after his Ford burst into flames during Sunday night’s Cookout Southern 500.
- Miller answered Harvick’s comments by saying NASCAR has been looking for the cause or causes of the fires.
NASCAR vice president Scott Miller has taken exception to Kevin Harvick’s recent comment that officials don’t care that race cars are catching fire at a higher rate than usual. Two cars were fire-related DNFs last weekend at Darlington, two others burned at Indy in the summer road race, and another burned at Richmond in August.
“To say that NASCAR didn’t care (about the Darlington fires) is about as far from the truth as you could get,” Miller, the organization’s senior vice-president of competition, said on a Tuesday morning radio show. “That’s really all I have to say about that. I’m not going to get into any kind of back-and-forth contest with Kevin (Harvick) over the airwaves. I think he actually does know we do care.”
Harvick lashed out at NASCAR – but not calling out Miller personally – after his Ford burst into flames during Sunday night’s Cookout Southern 500. “I’m sure it’s just crappy-ass parts on the race car like we’ve seen so many times,” Harvick said. “They haven’t fixed anything. It’s kind of like the safety stuff. We just let it keep going and keep going.”
(By rule, most parts and pieces on the controversial new Next Gen car must come from the same NASCAR-approved vendor. With few exceptions, teams are longer allowed to build and maintain its own inventory of parts and pieces. All teams basically shop from the same warehouses).
Miller answered Harvick’s comments by saying NASCAR has been looking for the cause or causes of the fires since the first ones involving Chris Buescher and Joey Logano at Indianapolis.
“We’re certainly digging into the cause … looking for any signs of anything that may have triggered that,” Miller said. “You know, we’ve done so all year. There’s a lot of rubber at Darlington … the ‘cheese grater’ that we always talked about. We’re not certain if rubber getting into the rocker box (near the exhaust) was the problem or not.
“We’re debriefing it all. It’s unacceptable for the cars to catch on fire.”
“We’re debriefing it all. It’s unacceptable for the cars to catch on fire. We’ve been working on different solutions for different things that seem to maybe be the trigger. We’re looking at clearances on particularly the Ford exhaust because they seem to been having a little bit more trouble than the other manufacturers.
“There’s a lot of work going on, a lot of collaboration within the industry to get to the bottom of it. Obviously, we have to get to the bottom of it quickly. We still have work to do.”
The second race in the 10-race Playoff Series is Sunday afternoon at Kansas Speedway. His fourth-place finish last weekend behind Erik Jones, Denny Hamlin, and Tyler Reddick boosted Logano into the points lead by six over William Byron.
Keyword: NASCAR VP Hits Back at Kevin Harvick Over Car Fire Comments