DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Just when it appeared it would be smooth sailing for Hendrick Motorsports at this year’s Daytona 500, some of that optimism went up in a puff of smoke during the Feb. 13 practice session.
Nearly every car using Hendrick engines experienced failure in the final practice session before Thursday’s Gatorade Duel at Daytona qualifying races. The issue appears to be a bad batch of lifters, which failed in practice, forcing all four Hendrick cars driven by Daytona 500 pole winner Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Budweiser Shootout winner Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Casey Mears to backup engines. Also, the No. 66 Chevrolet driven by Scott Riggs switched engines because that team uses its engines as part of a lease arrangement with HMS Engines.
Because those cars had to change engines, they were all moved to the back of the field in Thursday’s two 150-mile qualifying races.
HMS head engine builder Jeff Andrews said none of the engines broke, but there were issues with the lifters.
“We don’t have anything apart yet, we just have assumptions based on some early signs we saw in some check-overs following that early practice,” Andrews said. “We have a group of guys back in Charlotte — the best group of guys in my mind have already started on a fix for the program.
“We will get this stuff back, get it rebuilt and get it brought back down here. What we had to put in the cars, we have a lot of confidence in for tomorrow.”
Andrews did not believe the engine problems were the result of higher RPMs (revolutions per minute).
“Right now we are making a lot of assumptions because we haven’t been in and haven’t looked at the full picture until we get the engine completely apart,” he said. “We know we have a problem there with that lifter interface and until, like I said, we get the engine disassembled and find out what has actually caused that problem, I can’t really comment. I can’t really relate it to Toyota’s problems, because our package is different than theirs.”
Andrews said his department won’t be able to hone in on the problem until they get the engines apart, that right now there are many assumptions that could be made. He did indicate, however, that the lifters all came from the same vendor, so it could be a “batch” problem, meaning an issue when that batch of parts was produced.
Because of patent reasons, there are only a few vendors that NASCAR teams get lifters from, so the failure is likely an intermittent quality control issue.
“It is leading us to think we have an issue with a batch or something because this is the exact same package that we came down here and tested with,” Andrews said. “We have, I think, three durability runs on our AVL dynos back at the shop so we have a lot of confidence in the package.
“It’s the same package we raced in the Bud Shootout. We took engines back after the Bud Shootout; they look really good. Looked great, so we are looking at a batch issue right now and trying to sort through some things to get the guys in Charlotte pointed in the right direction.”
Toyota engines have also experienced a similar problem, which appears to be a coating issue. Those teams developed a “fix” for the problem before practice. All engines and engine parts were shipped back to TRD Headquarters in California after problems developed in last Friday’s practice.
“We came up with a solution and so far it works,” said Andy Graves of Toyota Racing Development. “We’ll see how the stuff holds up in the race. The other engines have looked fine today. The cars that have the engines in them that have our fix all look perfect right now.”