TALLADEGA, Ala. — It was a bad day for the drivers whose cars were powered by engines from the RCR/DEI cooperative engine department as blown engines by drivers on both teams in Sunday’s UAW-Ford 500 has left a big impact on NASCAR’s Chase for the Championship.
Jeff Burton was the first to go when the Chevrolet engine in his car blew up on lap 92. He finished last in the 43-car field and is now last among the 12 drivers in The Chase, 336 points out of first place.
“We just broke something in the engine,” Burton said. “Certainly we didn’t come here knowing we were going to have a problem. We felt secure with our engine package. It just didn’t work out for us. We certainly don’t need to break parts and pieces, but we are in unchartered territory turning this many rpms (revolutions per minute) for this amount of time is something we have never done and it bit us. It is our job to do better than that and we will.
“I suspect this is just too much for us to overcome regarding the championship. We will go and fight, do all we can and get all we can. But two finishes in the high 30s or high 40s isn’t going to get it done. Obviously, this about wraps it up for us for the championship. We will keep fighting. We will go next week and strap our boots on and go fight and see what we can make out of it.”
Martin Truex, Jr. was next to see his engine go up in smoke when it blew on lap 113.
“These guys have been doing a great job with the engines,” Truex said. “We had some awesome power today and we had a car capable of easily winning that race. We were just riding around biding our time and trying to get to the end. The last three weeks we’ve had nothing but bad luck and cars that could have won all three races. So it’s just frustrating. It’s tough to swallow.
“But we’ll go on to Charlotte and try to turn it around.”
 Truex finished 42nd and is now 10th in The Chase, 300 points out of the lead.
“Well, without any freaky luck for anyone else, we’re pretty much out of it,” he said. “We can’t get anything to go right for us and if you can’t have good luck, there is no chance for a championship. So, we’ll just go on and do what we can and try to win some races.”
And fan favorite Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who is not in The Chase, had his engine grenade on lap 136 after he led twice for 31 laps.
According to Steve Hmiel, DEI’s competition director, all three engines suffered similar failure.
“When you open the hood, now you know what to look for,” he said. “We had two, now we have three. The hole is in the same place in the oil pan. It’s breaking something inside and it’s breaking it in all three engines.
“The hole is coming from the rod breaking. All three have had the same failure and the rod is out the oil pan. You don’t want to have anything go wrong, but you hope that your program is consistent enough where you say if one breaks, there’s a good chance we’ll break them all. You’re not happy about it, but it shows everybody is getting the same stuff.”
The only RCR/DEI engine driver that didn’t have an engine problem was Clint Bowyer, who finished 11th.