NASCAR driver Ryan Preece plans to one day settle down in his native Connecticut, where he fell in love with working on cars, racing, and chasing speed and championships.
As the 2024 Cup Series season wound down, Preece faced an early retirement — a driver without a ride.
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Now at home with Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing, Preece delivered a long-awaited, emotional and defining win last Wednesday during sleet and near-freezing conditions at The Clash. He now plans to spend his peak years at the front of the pack — and Victory Lane.
The 200-lap exhibition contested on the .25-mile oval at Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, did not serve as Preece’s maiden Cup Series win. The 35-year-old still served notice.
“It shows that you can do it,” Preece told the Orlando Sentinel this week. “As much as it was an exhibition race, you had to qualify in. You had to execute the entire race as a team to win. As a race car driver and as a team, we did all those things right.
“We showed that we can go and we can execute and we can compete as a team — in many adverse conditions.”
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Preece will ride a wave of momentum as he tackles the ultimate test during Sunday’s Daytona 500. Cars race at speeds approaching 200 mph, bumper to bumper, often three-wide and on the cutting edge while competing for the sport’s biggest prize.
Preece is well-familiar with the perils of Daytona International Speedway, having experienced two of the most harrowing crashes in recent memory at the storied 2.5-mile oval.
Running near the front of the pack on Lap 197 of the 2025 Daytona 500, a bump from Christopher Bell caused Preece’s car to rise onto its back wheels before going airborne and flipping.
Afterward he said, “All I thought about was my daughter, so I’m lucky to walk away.”
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Rebecca Marie Preece was born Aug. 7, 2023, just 20 days before her father lost control of his car during the Coke Zero Sugar 400 and barrel rolled 10 times. Ryan Preece raced with broken blood vessels in his eyes from the impact.
Well-wishes and empathy followed each close-call. Preece raised continued concerns about the pliability of the Gen 7 car, introduced in 2022, likening it to “a sheet of plywood on a windy day.”
“I had a couple people that called me, but one stood out to me,” he recalled. “They explained this big event that they had wrecked their car on the road. I could tell it felt good for them to talk about it. Most race fans, they might have one accident, maybe, in their lifetime — and maybe it’s a big one, and it had a big impact on them.
“Race car drivers, we have big wrecks multiple times a season, sometimes, and we just shake it off.”
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Preece’s resilience is a badge of honor, harkening to the time Ricky Rudd taped his eyes open at the Daytona 500 after a concussion caused them to swell shut.
“Part of being a race car driver is being tough and mentally tough, and that’s who I am and that’s what I want to be,” Preece said. “I want to be somebody that is going to do things that other people won’t.”
The sacrifice and risk paid off with 26 wins in NASCAR’s Modified Tour, including the 2013 championship. Preece won two times each in the Truck and Xfinity series.
The success instilled hard-earned confidence, but did not translate to the Cup Series when he joined in 2019 and moved from Connecticut to North Carolina.
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When Stewart-Haas Racing decided to close shop at the end of the 2024 season, Preece worried whether a driver without a win and sporadic top-10 finishes would be in demand.
“There were many, many times where I thought to myself, am I going to have an opportunity? Am I going to be able to do this? Or is my career done?,” Preece recalled.
Hall of Fame owner Jack Roush and 36-time Cup Series winning Brad Keselowski took a chance on Preece. Racing in RFK’s No. 60 Ford Mustang in 2025, he posted a career-high 14 top-10s to finish a respectable 18th in the points standings.
“Much like any professional sport, it takes a great team,” Preece said. “It’s not like I just woke up in the past year or so and decided to start running well. I’ve always been able to go do it.
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“It was just trying to find the right place to do it.”
Preece fondly recalls his days on the short tracks Stafford and Thompson speedways in Connecticut or at Riverhead Raceway across Long Island Sound in Calverton, New York.
“I’m a die hard New Englander,” Preece said.
But a Yankee in a sport rooted in the Southeast has unfinished business before he returns home.
“I have every intention of moving back north when I’m done racing,” Preece said. “But I want to move home with a lot of trophies.”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com.
Daytona 500
When: 2:30 p.m., Sunday
Where:Daytona International Speedway
TV: FOX
