By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Ryan Preece was a passenger once again at Daytona International Speedway.
An untimely bump draft from Cole Custer to race leader Christopher Bell hooked the latter into the outside wall with five laps to go in Sunday’s Daytona 500.
As Bell’s No. 20 bounced off the wall, Preece could not avoid, contacting and launching off the ground nose-first into the air. Preece flew and eventually flipped on his roof, sliding into the Turn 3 wall before landing on his wheels.
Preece was conservative with his words exiting the infield medical center minutes later.
“I don’t know what the right thing to say right now is,” Preece said. “The thing I want to say as a father, as a racer, is that we keep beating on a door hoping for a different result. I think we know where there’s a problem on superspeedways.
“I don’t want to be the example. When it does finally get somebody, I don’t want it to be me.”
Preece has suffered several massive shunts in recent years, most of which occurring on a superspeedway. That includes nearly a dozen rollovers in August of 2023 on the same backstretch of Daytona.
“[Tonight’s flip] felt honestly worse than Daytona in 2023,” he said. “Everything about that; the airborne, heading toward the fence. It’s not a good place to be in.
“With a hit like that, a head-on hit impact, I don’t really think it should have gone airborne, right? I got a two-year-old daughter. Just like a lot of us, we have families. Something needs to be done because cars lifting off the ground like that… I’m just not very happy.”
Before the accident, Preece was eying a top 10 in his first race with RFK Racing for 2025.
“Ultimately, the thing I want to say is that we had a really fast car,” he said. “You can only do so much when everyone stacks up. I’m safe, just frustrated.”