Three years after a horrifying crash at Daytona International Speedway nearly ended his career, Ryan Preece returned to the same track Saturday night and won his first career NASCAR Cup Series race — punching his ticket into the Chase in the process.
Preece claimed the final Chase berth by 17 points over Shane van Gisbergen, who had led him by 31 points entering the regular-season finale. It was Preece’s first points-paying Cup win in 249 career starts.
“I’m just speechless right now,” Preece said afterward. “But those guys, that 60 group, we’re fighters. When you put our back against the wall, we swing hard… Last year there were a lot of keyboard warriors saying I was nothing. Well, we just kicked their butts tonight.”
Credit: Getty Images/NASCAR
The victory carried extra weight given where it happened. In August 2023, Preece was involved in a violent crash at this same track that sent his car flipping multiple times before he was taken to the infield care center on a stretcher. “I thought I was dead three years ago,” Preece said Saturday. “My wife thought I was dead. To come here and win at a place that almost ended my career means a lot.”
Preece needed both the victory and the accompanying 25-point bonus to overtake van Gisbergen for the 16th and final Chase spot — points alone would not have been enough. He recovered from a three-car wreck late in the first stage that damaged his No. 60 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford’s left front fender, then worked his way back to the front over the closing stages while stretching fuel mileage through the final 65-lap run.
Preece surged past Tyler Reddick and Zane Smith for the lead in overtime moments before Smith turned into the outside wall, igniting a multicar pileup that brought out the race’s fourth and final caution with Preece ahead. The race went six laps beyond its scheduled 160-lap distance.
The chaos traced back to Lap 155, when Carson Hocevar made an aggressive move to the bottom entering Turn 3, lost the rear of his Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, and slammed into the outside wall — collecting Erik Jones and spinning Ty Gibbs in the process. “I just changed from top to bottom there, and that was the first time I really got a ton of air on my nose into three and I just lost it,” Hocevar said.
Daniel Suarez finished second for the second consecutive summer at Daytona, followed by Reddick, Michael McDowell and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Austin Cindric came home sixth to clinch the 15th seed, nine points ahead of Preece, who enters the postseason as the 16th and final seed. Ford has now won four straight Coke Zero Sugar 400s dating back to 2023.
Van Gisbergen’s night unraveled late: after winning Stage 1, he pitted for four tires on Lap 157, dropping him to 27th for the overtime restart — a position from which he couldn’t avoid the closing wreck. He finished 28th and was eliminated from Chase contention.
Denny Hamlin enters the Chase as the top seed with 2,100 points, having clinched the position last weekend at New Hampshire. Ryan Blaney holds the No. 2 seed with 2,075 points despite wrecking on the final lap and finishing 33rd Saturday; he’d already secured his spot with a Stage 2 win.
The Chase opens Sunday, Sept. 6, with the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, airing at 5 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
