Ryan Preece on airborne wrecks: ‘Daytona’s kicked my ass’

No one in the Next Gen era has had harder hits with as much frequency as Ryan Preece. His NASCAR highlight reel the last few years is rough. Of course, the two flips at Daytona in recent years are the first thing to come to mind.

Two flips at Daytona. Then there was the hit on Kyle Larson at Talladega that led to changes in the superspeedway package with new steel plates going onto the passenger side of the cars. Preece has been in and out of big wrecks for three years now.

This year at the Daytona 500, Preece did a wheelie and basically a backflip in his car. So, what does he think about the car and what can be done to prevent future incidents?

“Yeah I don’t know. I’m not an aeronautical engineer and I don’t study those parts and pieces. That’s a tough one to answer,” Preece told the Rubbin’ is Racing podcast. “I will say, Daytona’s kicked my ass when it comes to flying airborne, man. We had a driver’s meeting just talking about some of the things with NASCAR this past week, and I forgot what it was they were talking about but somebody mentioned something about air time and said, I’m two up on everybody. So, they can do all that testing moving forward.”

This season, Ryan Preece might be the surprise of the year. He is firmly the second-best RFK Racing driver of the first six races. He is 16th in points. Preece is even coming off back-to-back top-10 finishes ahead of Martinsville.

Ryan Preece could shine at Martinsville

The thing is, coming off his P3 and P9 finishes the last two weeks, Ryan Preece is going to a favorite track of his. At least, one that he has seen the most in a variety of series. Coming from the NASCAR Modified Series, Preece and Martinsville are very familiar with each other.

In his modified career, Preece has won a couple of races at Martinsville. He first won at the Paperclip back in 2009, that’s a long time ago. However, Preece returned to the series in 2023 and won again at Martinsville.

Last season, Preece had a great run in this Martinsville race. P9 in Stewart-Haas equipment. He won the pole at Martinsville in 2023 and could have won the race if a few things play out differently; he led the most laps in the race that year.

So, Ryan Preece – what do you think about him? Is Martinsville the place where he can shock the Cup Series and get an upset win?