DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The last time he raced at Daytona International Speedway, Ryan Preece took a significant tumble down the back straightaway, his No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford flipping wildly through the August air.
Preece is back at the 2.5-mile behemoth of a race track nearly six months later, this time eyeing a chance to win the 66th annual Daytona 500 on Monday (4 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Deportes, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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The harrowing crash was visually dramatic and left Preece with two black eyes, but the hard-nosed competitor returned to the Central Florida coast with no trepidation ahead of a 500-mile test in the NASCAR Cup Series that could result in the same outcome.
“Honestly, I look at this race or this track no different than I did a year ago,” Preece said during Daytona 500 Media Day. “I think it … gave people more mixed feelings about this race track for my wife and my father than it did me. But as a racer, I’ll speak for myself: I’m numb to these things. Getting in the race car and having that happen? Crappy deal. I was pissed off more that we had such a fast race car and wasn’t able to finish the race.”
That mindset encompasses much of the tough exterior Preece exudes as a Connecticut native rooted in the fight-for-every-spot-you-want-natured NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour culture. It wasn’t until watching replays of his Daytona crash some 30 or 40 times, Preece estimated, that the severity of the crash truly set in.
“Things happen really fast,” Preece said. “So for your brain to really interpret everything that happened throughout that wreck, it certainly is something that comes — you just remember more and more.”
Following Preece’s tumble, NASCAR officials examined what was left of the No. 41 Ford and researched the causes of the accident that led Preece airborne. As a result, more grass was removed from the backstretch in favor of more asphalt, with more pavement to come and extending to Turn 3 following the conclusion of the Daytona 500 weekend. That decision was met upon determination that the car became airborne after contacting the infield grass, creating even a brief separation between the tires, underbody, and surface.
“Right now, with our rules packages, with the limiters and the diffuser and everything that we have, that was the best alternative that we needed to do,” Preece said. “And certainly, I don’t want to see any other driver have to fly in the air like that. Because at the end of the day, I was certainly lucky. I understand that. You’re inches away from possibly not walking out of here or seeing your family again. So, for me, I’m happy they did it, and it was a step in what needed to be done to keep these cars on the ground.”
Daytona Speedweeks, meanwhile, is off to a solid start for the 33-year-old Preece, who won the tour-type modified feature race at the nearby New Smyrna Speedway on Tuesday night during the half-mile short track’s World Series of Asphalt.
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Despite a 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season that saw the four-car SHR group struggle, Preece is optimistic he and teammates Chase Briscoe, sophomore Noah Gragson and rookie Josh Berry are ready to turn the ship.
“I feel like there’s certain traits that I have that push them as well as certain traits that they have that push me,” Preece said. “So I feel like it complements each other as well. Us at Stewart-Haas, we hear everybody. We hear you guys. We’re not just ignoring it. And as you heard Tony (Stewart, team co-owner), mediocracy isn’t acceptable. I’m a race car driver. I’m somebody that’s very passionate about what I do. And I do it outside the Cup Series and I don’t accept mediocracy.
“I know within our 41 team, we didn’t have the year we wanted, but we set some of the foundation that we needed going into this year and now we’re gonna go do what we need to do. As a race car driver, to have a long-lasting career, you need to win races and I’m sick of talking about not winning.”