Kevin Harvick addresses wild Ryan Preece wreck, NASCAR safety measures at Daytona

One of the scariest wrecks in recent NASCAR memory occurred Sunday at the Daytona 500, when Ryan Preece went fully airborne after being slammed into by a spinning-out Christopher Bell.

Preece hurtled through the air at an alarming speed, eventually flipping, flying back up into the outside wall at the track and then settling to a rest. Thankfully, right side up.

“Ryan has taken just some really big shots,” Kevin Harvick said on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast. “I was really happy to see him get out of that car. I was very quiet and nervous as this whole time was passing right here as to whether that window net was going to be dropped, because it was a very unique hit.”

There were a few things at play in the incident. Many have pointed to Cole Custer racing a little too aggressively — Denny Hamlin ripped him for that — for the contact that led to the Ryan Preece accident.

Others have pointed to the design of the car itself as the reason it took off airborne like that.

“I think when you see Ryan go to the inside here, the right front ramps up over the left rear of whoever he hits right here (Erik Jones),” Harvick said. “And with the way the bottom of these cars are, just being a solid sheet, that thing just kind of turns into a kite and just kind of hovers up in the air right there. Doesn’t really come back on the ground.

“I think everybody agrees that the bottom of the car having that huge, flat surface on it is definitely not great for not making the cars turn over. I feel like they’ve made it better with the pieces that they’ve put on the roof and keeping it so that when it’s sideways it doesn’t flip over, but I don’t know that anybody imagined they’d see one jump straight up in the air.”

But there have been at least some instances of that already, beyond just Ryan Preece. Harvick pointed out that Ty Gibbs got three wheels worth of air after ramping into the side of Justin Haley at Bowman Gray in retaliation.

Can that type of flight be eliminated by a manufacturing change?

“I don’t know there’s any really simulation for the ramping and flying piece of it,” Harvick said.

In any case, Ryan Preece appeared no worse for the wear despite the hard shot. That’s the good news.

Still, it’s probably worth NASCAR taking a close look over things to see if there’s anything that can be improved when it comes to cars taking off into the air.

“I was happy that the car flipped over, because it backed into the wall pretty hard,” Harvick said. “When the suspension is broke it’s hitting the floor in the rub blocks and everything. And from a driver’s perspective it smashes you down in the seat and compresses your spine, and all those are super big shots to the car, but that relates directly to the body. Happy that Ryan is OK. Hate to see the cars flying around like that. I don’t even know how you test that one.”

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