Elton Sawyer reacts to Ryan Preece Daytona crash, explains NASCAR response

Elton Sawyer, NASCAR’s senior vice president of competition, is looking into the violent wreck involving Ryan Preece at the Daytona 500. On SiriusXM NASCAR Radio this week, Sawyer said NASCAR has begun taking a second look at the Preece car as it went airborne at Daytona for the second time in three years.

“Yeah, first and foremost, it was great to see Ryan get out of the car and it was in a very short period of time. You know, he rides to the infield care center and we get the notification in race controls that the drivers (have been) evaluated and released in a short period of time — so that’s good news that he’s doing well,” Sawyer said, per Sportsnaut.

“Number two, it’s something that we will continue to work on and we have been, and the team at the back, Dr. (Eric) Jacuzzi and his team will continue to dissect exactly what happened. On the eye test for all of us, looking at the replay, when Ryan, basically got up on the side of the 20 car and once the front of the car is up in the air, obviously we’re getting into a situation there.”

Elton Sawyer shares more on the Ryan Preece wreck at the Daytona 500

Sawyer continued, “The front stayed up for a while, but once the car started to turn, the air started to see the side of it. I’m not an aerodynamicist (and) I don’t claim to be, but I know the guys in the back will dissect that. We’ll go over this morning, in this particular case, our team at the racetrack, Eric and his team and Brandon Thomas and the team looked at the car (and) felt like all the safety stuff did what we needed it to do so we allowed the team to put it in their transporter, bring it back here to Concord, and the RFK shop is right across the street from us so we’ll send our folks over there this morning to start looking through that, working closely with Ryan and the team and the folks at RFK to see what we can learn. And then we will, if there (are) things that come out of that that we can implement going forward as we’ve done in the past, we will continue to do that.”

Ryan Preece was involved in a crash at Daytona in the summer of 2023 where his car flipped multiple times. However, the 34-year-old driver told reporters the crash on Sunday was worse.