Ryan Preece describes the feeling of airborne wreck at Daytona 500 in great detail

One of the scariest crashes this weekend at the Daytona 500 saw Ryan Preece catch full air, flipping over in his vehicle after popping a brief wheelie and going vertical.

Preece came away from the crash begging NASCAR to take a long, hard look at the car and the data to determine what can be done to prevent those types of wrecks in the future, which he said could get somebody killed.

On the Stacking Pennies podcast with Corey LaJoie this week, Ryan Preece joined, providing a closer look at the crash.

Here’s what he saw and heard initially.

“So in that moment you know, when you’re tucked up on the guy, because I was on (William) Byron, because as my job I’m trying to get Byron to whoever’s in front of him to make sure we’re moving on our row,” Preece explained. “All I heard next before this all happened was, ‘They’re wrecking’ and then bam. It was like split second.”

Christopher Bell was tagged by Cole Custer and spun into the outside wall. As he did so, his car began dropping back on the field, where it eventually caromed off the wall and slammed into Ryan Preece’s right side.

Preece’s car was pushed up into Erik Jones‘, where it slipped over the top of the hood and began to go airborne.

“Yeah it was kind of like Talladega Nights,” Preece said. “Actually right there in that moment I’m like eyes are closed and it gets, as you know, dead silent. And I knew for how long it was dead silent, I’m like in my head I think I’m like 10 feet, 15 feet in the air and I’m launching it past the grandstand or past the fence.

“In that moment I’m like, ‘We’ve got a problem.'”

LaJoie played the footage for Ryan Preece, showing him an angle or two he hadn’t seen before. The camera got a clear shot of the underbelly of Preece’s car, with the back brakes firing off.

“You see the rear brakes lock up?” Preece asked. “That’s when I hit the brake pedal in the air thinking I was going to stop it. I was like, ‘Here’s my ticket, I want off the ride. I don’t want to get on here.’ Apparently I needed to watch more Monster Jam and lay on the throttle.”

Ryan Preece has now been in a major accident where he’s gone flipping twice in a row at the Daytona 500.

He was asked to compare the two and the violence of the hits. He said this year’s crash was worse.

“I think so,” Preece said, before explaining he wasn’t wearing his data-gathering mouthpiece this year. “I didn’t wear it. I had actually been wearing it all weekend, but what I found is I must grind my teeth, so they gave me the other one and the other just had a little bit of like it was pulling on my teeth, and I didn’t like it. After I had started with it with the first rain delay and I had enough time to think about it right before we got going and I just ripped it out right before. So I didn’t.

“But I can tell you I thought this one was … optically it didn’t look as bad, but I thought it was worse.”