Richard Childress seeks answers to Kansas engine failure for AJ Allmendinger

NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — ECR Engines is closing in on a cause for AJ Allmendinger’s blown engine last weekend at Kansas Speedway, a failure that led to the driver’s radio rant against the engine company that Richard Childress serves as Chairman and CEO.

Allmendinger’s engine blew after six laps last weekend. After the engine blew, Allmendinger said on his team’s radio: “Hey ECR, you guys (expletive) suck.”

When a team member asked if he had lost an engine, Allmendinger replied on the radio: “Yeah, shockingly.”

The engine failure was the second of the season for Allmendinger. Those have been the only two engine failures for ECR in the Cup Series.

ECR provides engines for Kaulig Racing, Richard Childress Racing, Trackhouse Racing and Beard Motorsports.

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Childress told NBC Sports on Friday at North Wilikesboro that he had yet to talk to Allmendinger but expressed his displeasure with Allmendinger’s comments, noting how other drivers have reacted on a team’s radio after an engine failure.

“The 12 (Ryan Blaney) blew up two times,” Childress said. “The 48 (Alex Bowman) blew up (one time). They never said anything. It’s how you want to run your mouth.”

Childress said he wanted to talk to Allmendinger when there was a definitive answer to the engine’s failure.

“I want to know what happened to the engine,” Childress said. “When (Allmendinger) jumps out (of the car at Kansas), he don’t even know if the belt come off the oil pump or what.”

Adding to the frustrations for Allmendinger is that the engine failure marked the second consecutive race he failed to finish. A crash ended his day at Texas in the previous race. Those two finishes dropped him from 15th in the points to 25th heading into next weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Joey Logano won last year’s All-Star Race, leading 199 of 200 laps.

Danny Lawrence, vice president of alliance operations for ECR Engines, told NBC Sports that debris may have caused the issue with Allmendinger’s engine last weekend at Kansas.

“It was a bearing issue,” Lawrence said. “We at RCR and ECR have a quality control department. They’re struggling to figure out exactly what happened. They’ve sent the bearings off to be analyzed, but the initial (cause) looks like lack of lubrication.

“That engine had ran at Darlington. We’re not so sure that we didn’t have some kind of foreign material, something, an oil line or something happened for (the) lack of lubrication.”

Lawrence said what caused the failure with two of the eight bearings should be known this week.

As to what could have got in the line, Lawrence is unsure.

“We have filters on the oil going in, we have filters on the oil coming out,” Lawrence said. “So it’s baffling, but Richard is holding a strong arm (saying) ‘I want answers to be able to show (Kaulig Racing President) Chris Rice and (team owner) Matt Kaulig. We’re going to know exactly (what happened) and try to make sure this never happens again.”