Ryan Preece Grinds His Way to Win in Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray

It took three extra days and a set of wet-weather tires to get to this point, but finally, the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium has officially wrapped, and in the end, it’s produced an amazing story.

The sanctioning body was forced to postpone the race on two separate occasions as a record-setting winter storm ravaged the Winston-Salem, North Carolina area on the weekend of NASCAR’s annual pre-season exhibition — forcing teams to return on Wednesday for a mid-week show.

Though for Ryan Preece, a well-known Modified driver out of the Northeast who is no stranger to Bowman Gray Stadium and tight quarter-mile racetracks just like it, the race was worth the wait, and in the end, a source of validation for the Berlin, Connecticut-native as a NASCAR Cup Series driver.

“I don’t even know what to say, to be honest with you, it’s been a fucking long road,” said Preece. “You know, it’s the Clash, but man, it’s been years and years of grinding.”

“Two years ago, I didn’t think I was going to have a job, I thought I was going back to Connecticut, and I’m just super, super emotional,” Preece said while in tears in Victory Lane.

Granted, the 200-lap exhibition event was anything but ordinary…

While the first 100-lap segment of the event proved to be a standard run-of-the-mill short track event for the NASCAR Cup Series, being dominated by the powerhouse organizations of Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, there was no doubt a switch flipped at the halfway point.

At the halfway break, Ryan Preece, driving the No. 60 Coca-Cola Ford Mustang Dark Horse, was running a respectable ninth after driving his RFK Racing entry into the top-10, leaving himself in contention for a solid finish.

Then the skies opened up… and a rain shower started falling, which eventually turned into sleet (thanks to the frigid cold temperatures), and at one point during the halfway break, it straight-up looked like it was snowing.

Little did anybody know, they’d already run their final laps on slick tires.

When NASCAR tried to get the race back underway, while a shower was still falling from the sky, Ryan Preece was anything but supportive. The race would resume, although after jet driers aided the drying process a little bit more.

Things got out of hand rather quickly after that, and within the first 21 laps of the second segment of the event, the field had already matched the three cautions it’d recorded in the first 100-lap segment.

Attrition would quickly become the most prevalent part of the event, with a total of 17 cautions falling over the course of the 200 green-flag-lap event, which resulted in more than 100 caution laps being run, to the point where several drivers were running out of fuel.

Preece, despite his disdain for racing in the wet conditions, methodically made his way through the pack, and before anybody noticed, had placed himself in contention to sneak out a victory in the Cook Out Clash… and boy, was he aggressive doing so, diving into Turn 1 on restarts and getting into the right-side of the drivers restarting on the outside lane.

The 35-year-old driver ended up pacing the field for 46 laps, second only to polesitter Kyle Larson, who paced the field early in the event before drastically falling off the pace at the end of the run. However, there were many battles, including with drivers such as Carson Hocevar and Shane Van Gisbergen, all battles in which the Modified racer came out on top.

Then, as the field found its rhythm in the closing laps, Preece was able to drive away from William Byron to win the exhibition event by 1.752 seconds. Ryan Blaney had a strong car all evening, but came home in third place after battling for second late in the going.

RELATED: Josh Berry, Austin Cindric Advance to Cook Out Clash After Epic Battle

Daniel Suarez had an impressive first showing in the No. 7 Chevrolet for Spire Motorsports, finishing in fourth, while Denny Hamlin rounded out the top five, despite being credited as being involved in four different incidents in the second half of the race.

Chase Briscoe had a strong Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry XSE, leading 35 laps, but faded to sixth place late, while Austin Dillon, his fellow Bass Pro Shops-sponsored driver, finished seventh.

Chris Buescher, Ross Chastain, and Alex Bowman (who took a provisional to make the main event in the first place) rounded out the top-10.

Kyle Larson led a race-high 67 laps on the afternoon but ended up getting involved in several wrecks late in the going — some of which happened after the HendrickCars.com Chevrolet ran out of gas and fell two laps off the pace.

Now, the NASCAR Cup Series is off for a weekend before traveling to Daytona International Speedway for Speedweeks, which is set to begin one week from tonight on Wednesday, February 11, with single-vehicle qualifying.

The DAYTONA 500, the first points-paying event of 2026, will take place on Sunday, February 15 at 2:30 PM ET on FOX.

COOK OUT CLASH – RACE RESULTS: