Preece offers a warning to NASCAR after another superspeedway flip

Ryan Preece experienced another rollover on the Daytona backstretch Sunday night in the Daytona 500 and warned afterward that NASCAR is getting close to a driver not walking away.

Preece was collected in one of the biggest wrecks of the night with five laps to go. It started at the front of the field when Christopher Bell, who was leading the outside lane, was turned off the bumper of Cole Custer. Bell was turned into the outside wall as the field came storming past. Preece was running around the 12th position, five rows behind Bell, and had nowhere to go.

The initial contact saw Preece hit the left front of Bell’s car and launch into the air nose first. The car never landed. It flipped over, landed on its roof, and slid onto the banking before flipping back over.

“I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what that makes these cars like a sheet of plywood when you walk out on a windy day,” Preece said. “But when the car took off like that and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter. I’m lucky to walk away but we’re getting really close to somebody not being able to.

“It’s frustrating when you end your day like this.”

Preece and his No. 60 RFK Racing team were credited with a 32nd-place finish. He led six laps.

Sunday was the second time in less than two years Preece has been airborne at Daytona. In the summer of 2023, Preece was spun from the middle of the pack going down the backstretch. His Ford went airborne after coming across the nose of Chase Briscoe and sliding through the grass, barrel-rolling multiple times.

NASCAR eliminated all of the grass on the backstretch after that wreck. Sunday, he was the only driver to flip in the Daytona 500.

“We had a really good car,” Preece said. “Honestly, I don’t even know what happened in front of me. I haven’t seen the replay. I was in line, pushing, and when you get down to the end of these races, we are all just really aggressive because you have to be aggressive. It is just the position we are in. We had a really fast BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang, and it is just frustrating when you can’t do anything with it.”