In what was the biggest race of his life, Ryan Preece not only earned his first career win at Daytona, but he clinched himself into the Chase for the first time in his career. This was not only huge for his season, but this race was personal. Considering the scary crashes Preece experienced in 2023 and 2025 at Daytona, it was fitting for it to be a happy ending this time. Yet, for what seemed like a dream scenario for RFK Racing and this #60 team, it definitely did not go to plan.
Things went array early in the race. As the field came to end stage one, Kyle Larson gave RFK’s Chris Buescher a bad push. Buescher would hit the outside wall, while Kyle Larson and Ryan Preece would Tokyo drift through the grass. Preece’s involvement in the incident was huge intially. Entering the race, he was one of three drivers who was fighting for the remaining two Chase positions. While this crash didn’t eliminate him, it did send him from third to eighth in just a few hundred feet. This would end up costing Preece five points. In addition, his competitor Shane van Gisbergen would benefit from the incident, passing the crash to win the stage. This exchange put him another seven points behind his target.
Preece made up for that loss by clawing his way back in stage two to finish second. Throughout the race, he earned himself twelve stage points, while van Gisbergen only scored the ten. While two points isn’t significant, it still is something.
The latter portion of the race was an uneventful strategic battle. With 39 laps to go, Ross Chastain led a group of Chevy’s into pit road. Then, another handful of drivers countered with around twenty laps to go. These drivers would attempt to gain an advantage, but it would later be washed away. Preece and others would remain on the track, hoping for some luck.
With around ten laps to go, thing got chaotic while Preece was leading. Then with six laps to go, it snapped. Carson Hocevar made an abrupt move on Preece entering turn three, where he would lose control of his car. Hocevar would then come back onto the track, make hard contact with the outside wall, and collect Erik Jones in the process.
In overtime, Preece started on the outside of the front row, with fellow Ford racing driver Zane Smith by his side. Smith would initially get the jump over the field, but things changed on the last lap in turn two. Smith attempted to block Tyler Reddick up top, but he would get turned into the outside wall. Ryan Preece was right below this, and it would launch him to the lead. He held off hard charging competitors as chaos erupted in his mirror.
The race remained green at first, but then Ryan Blaney would get spun into the outside wall. NASCAR threw the caution, and the #60 team was the victor. Preece would get in by a mere sixteen points over SVG. Considering the fifteen bonus points a driver gets for winning the race, if Preece finished second, he wouldn’t have made the cut.
In Preece’s post-race interview, emotion was exploding out of the veteran. When referring to his team, Preece said
“We’re fighters, when you put our back against the wall, we swing hard. There were a lot of keyboard warriors saying I was nothing. Well, we just kicked their butts tonight.”
Preece then delivered an iconic one liner saying “Thanks to everyone at RFK for giving me a rocket ship, so I could go to the moon tonight.”
The Chase field is now set. Denny Hamlin will hold a 25 point lead over second seed Ryan Blaney, and Ryan Preece will now run for a championship this year.