After Kevin Harvick's car became the latest to catch fire this past weekend in the Southern 500, a NASCAR executive declared that "it's unacceptable for the cars to go on fire" and that the series officials are still investigating the situation.
After exiting his on-fire car, Harvick scathed NASCAR and the Next Gen car. When asked by Marty Snider of NBC Sports what started the fire, Harvick responded:
"I'm sure it's just subpar race car parts, as we've seen so many times. Nothing has been fixed. It is comparable to the safety information. We did nothing more than watch it continues.
Senior vice president of competition Scott Miller responded to Harvick's remarks on "The Morning Drive" on Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
According to Miller, to imply NASCAR didn't care is as far from the truth as you can go. I honestly don't have anything further to say about that. I'm not going to engage Kevin in a radio debate in which we argue back and forth. He may truly be aware of our concern, I believe.
Fords have primarily been involved in car fires this season. Chris Buescher's fire after impact on the Indianapolis road course, Joey Logano's fire after contact at the Indianapolis road course, and Chase Briscoe's fire at Richmond are a few examples of famous incidents.
Miller told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, "We've been working on different solutions for different things along the way that seems to be the trigger." There is still work to be done.
"We're looking at clearances, especially for the Ford exhaust, as they appear to be having more issues than the others with this. There is a lot of effort and industry cooperation to find out what's going on. Naturally, we need to find the answer quickly.
"A lot of rubber is produced in Darlington... Regarding Harvick's fire, Miller stated, "we're not sure if rubber getting into the rocker box caused the problem or not. "We're going through everything. The autos starting a fire is unacceptable.
Miller agreed that the previous week's crash at Daytona, which was brought on by the wet track, had an impact on series officials. Some drivers criticized NASCAR for failing to issue a rain caution before that occurrence. The rain warning, which was in effect from laps 6 to 16, hampered the Southern 500.
Miller declared, "We couldn't afford to have another incident as we did at Daytona. It seems obvious to say that we were more careful. Sincerely, there have been occasions in history when we have raced through the sprinkles we experienced at the start of the Southern 500.
"We did what we did, which, in hindsight, was the proper decision and only slightly delayed it," the pilot said. "We knew from the radar that it was a quick passing, very small cell and we didn't believe we were going to completely lose the track and have to red-flag it."
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