Ryan Preece releases official comeback video ahead of Darlington
The night of his barrel roll wreck at Daytona, Ryan Preece said he was coming back. He wasn’t kidding, either. With a little rest and recovery back home with his wife and newborn daughter, Preece is ready to get back in the No. 41 Ford Mustang and race around NASCAR‘s Lady in Black.
Race car drivers are some of the toughest athletes around. While it might seem to outsiders that all they do is go around in circles, that is the best-case scenario at times. When it comes to superspeedways, wrecks can be violent and cause damage. Not just to cars, but to drivers as well.
Watching Ryan Preece flip so many times at such a speed, you would think he would take some time off. The tough Northeasterner isn’t going to quit or rollover. He’s back with a strong message and ready to drive in the Cup Series on Sunday.
Preece has been cleared by NASCAR to race again and he’s going to.
“No bulls**t. I’ll see you at Darlington,” Preece said in this hype video.
One can’t deny the toughness that Ryan Preece is showing here. No one would have blamed him if he needed a week after the most violent wreck of his life to get himself right. That’s just not how he’s built, though.
While there have been some issues with Ford this season and Stewart-Haas Racing hasn’t had a lot of speed – Darlington is a track the blue ovals were strong at early in the season.
It would be a longshot pick, but how special would it be to see the No. 41 upset these playoff guys for a win on Sunday?
Ryan Preece 400-1 longshot at Darlington
I mean, it would be a really massive upset if we saw Preece steal this race on Sunday. The SHR driver has a single top-5 on the year from Richmond. To be honest, he wasn’t terrible at Darlington, just not as good as some others. P15 earlier this year at the Goodyear 400, let’s see him improve upon that.
400-1 odds isn’t great. However, Ryan Preece isn’t the least favored driver in the field. He’s tied with or favored over seven other drivers in the Cup Series field.
So, let’s talk about the favorites. The regular season champion, Martin Truex Jr. has the best odds to win the Cook Out Southern 500. At 5-1 odds, he is slightly favored over Kyle Larson and William Byron. Byron was the winner of the Darlington race in the spring.
While this race was all Byron, I’m still not convinced about the 24 team. These playoffs are going to require consistency and that worries me with Byron who seems to disappear for a race or two at a time. When it comes down to it, I think this might be a Denny Hamlin kind of race. We will know more as practice and qualifying come and go.