Many expected Ryan Preece to have a career breakout once he landed at Stewart-Haas Racing heading into the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season. After two disappointing seasons at the now-defunct race team, a large portion of folks had begun to write the 34-year-old driver off.
This offseason, Preece landed at RFK Racing as the driver of the newly formed third full-time No. 60 entry, and expectations were subdued. 23 races into the season, Preece has shown why he was once a heralded prospect who landed rides with JTG Daugherty Racing and Stewart-Haas. And honestly, last weekend’s effort at Iowa Speedway was a prime example of the effectiveness of Preece and the No. 60 RFK Racing team.
Preece started the Iowa Corn 350 deep in the field in the 33rd position, and while he struggled initially in the race, he was able to remain on the lead lap, which allowed crew chief Derrick Finley to keep making strategy calls while taking swings at the handling on the No. 60 Ford Mustang Dark Horse. Then, in Stage 2, an opportune caution dealt them the perfect hand.
“I mean, from ultimately how it started, which wasn’t that great, I thought we were in for a long day,” Preece said in a Ford Performance teleconference on Wednesday. “We caught a break at the beginning of Stage 2, and that pretty much gave us the opportunity to make some good adjustments, get some track position, and execute on restarts. I really thought we were gonna have a shot at it there and maybe possibly pull off an upset at the end of stage three when we finally got going, but I just built too loose to where we could continue to push those guys, but certainly nothing to be disappointed on with coming out of Iowa with a fifth place finish for Mohawk Northeast.”
It started off rough, but at the end of the day, Preece and the No. 60 team continued to build momentum with a solid fifth-place finish.
With 13 races left in the season, the Connecticut native has already amassed career-best season tallies for top-five finishes, top-10s, and he is on pace to easily surpass his all-time best average finish over the course of a season. Heading into the 2025 season, Preece had just three top-five finishes throughout his first 187 career NASCAR Cup Series starts.
With the career year, has come the potential for Preece’s first-career NASCAR Cup Series Playoff berth. While he sits 13th in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings, Preece finds himself 23 points below Chris Buescher, his RFK Racing teammate, for the final Playoff spot with three races remaining in the regular season.
Preece knows it’s going to be a hard-fought battle with Buescher, but he is comfortable with how respectful both racers have been with each other.
“To be honest with you, Chris and I race really well together, so I think we have enough respect for each other on the racetrack to do it the right way, and we’re gonna race hard,” Preece said. “I think between this week and next week, I think both of us – he sees Watkins Glen as a great opportunity to go win and get himself in, and the way I need to race it is gonna change throughout that race. From there, that will lead into Richmond, and if the points battle is really close going into Daytona, obviously, we’re gonna take care of each other when it comes to superspeedways, and the last few laps you’ve just got to do the best you can to try and win that race.
“So, I’m not really entirely sure of how to approach it, other than the way we’ve been doing it all year, which is take care of each other and race each other with a lot of respect and don’t wreck each other.”
While many have Buescher penciled in as one of the few drivers expected to potentially challenge Shane van Gisbergen, who has won three of the four road course races this season, and rightfully so, for a win in Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen, don’t sleep on Preece.
Heading into this weekend’s event at Watkins Glen International, Preece, who has three top-five results on the year, is on a two-race top-five finishing streak. While the tenacious racer, who cut his teeth driving modifieds in the Northeast, wasn’t highly regarded for his road racing talent prior to this season, he has really turned in some solid efforts on tracks where right turns are as common as left-handers.
Preece scored a Stage Win at Circuit of the Americas, as well as at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, and he picked up his career-best road course finish with a seventh-place finish on the streets of Chicago.
In the four NASCAR Cup Series events on road courses this season, Preece has a very respectable average finish of 13.0. All of a sudden, road racing is a source of strength for Preece.
“I think road courses have been pretty good to us,” Preece said. “You never know. There’s a lot of chaos at the end of them. At the end of the day, we just need to put ourselves in a position to execute if [Shane van Gisbergen] were to have something go wrong or whatnot. I feel like Chris [Buescher] is gonna be tough to beat at the road course, so I feel good there.”
No matter how his chase for a NASCAR Cup Series Playoff spot turns out this season, Preece is happy and thankful that the planets have finally aligned in his career for him to showcase that he is capable of getting the job done in the NASCAR Cup Series.
“I knew all along that given the right opportunity and everything coming together, that I could go do this, so, for me, it’s satisfying because this has been a grind,” Preece expressed. “I’ll use Michael McDowell as another example of years and years of grinding and grinding to put together opportunities to where you can succeed. I’m grateful for the opportunity that’s been put together with everybody at RFK. To be able to go show this and have a road map to succeed and work hard, and if you put in all of that time that you’ll see the success.”
If the grind results in Preece’s first NASCAR Cup Series Playoff appearance, Preece will check off the goal he had coming into the 2025 season. If not, Preece knows that he and RFK Racing are building up to an even more successful future, which will expand far past the 2025 season.
“It would be nice to go out and win this weekend or one of these next three weeks, or have the opportunity to point our way in. I want to make the playoffs. That’s what we kind of said. We want to make the playoffs going into the year,” Preece explained, “and to be honest with you, I could tell there weren’t a lot of people that had us on their Bingo card, and I like that. I thrive off that, so, for me, now from a racer’s standpoint, I want to win, and I don’t want to just win once; I want to win a lot. We’re building that notebook and together as a group to be able to do that, so I look forward to these next three races as opportunities to try and win our way in, but if not, we’re gonna look at those next 10 races and use them as a way to build and even try to win and finish out this year and then carry that momentum into next year.”
