By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Despite sitting on the outside of the Playoff grid and needing a win to get one of its three cars into the postseason with a shot at the championship, RFK Racing remains bullish about its chances to get in with a victory in Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona.
“If you’re gonna try to win this race, I guarantee you’re gonna have to go through an RFK car to win. I feel like we’re in a strong position to get one of our cars in and good luck to the other ones that are gonna have to get through us,” Ryan Preece said confidently on Friday.
Strong words, but the team has the performance to back it up, with two of the three drivers in the RFK stable, team owner Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher, having won previously at Daytona and all three cars seemingly always in the mix on the superspeedways.
“Win the race,” Keselowski said of the plan for Saturday night. “You try to plan for races that have so much chaos and it’s kind of absurd to try to do that, so you just try to survive and win at the end.”
“I feel like we’re kind of due,” Keselowski added. “We’ve had a lot of great runs. Ryan had a shot to win at Talladega and missed by a few feet and I’ve had three or four second place runs here in the last year and a half on restrictor plate tracks and kind of feel like we’re in a good spot to get one.”
They expect that to continue on Saturday night as they take a one for all and all for one approach to getting one of its three cars into Victory Lane and into the Playoffs.
“We know how plate racing has been for RFK and how competitive we’ve been at these things and how much fun they are for us and how important it is to work together as teammates,” said Buescher.
“Ultimately, there’s only ever one winner, so every time you come into a speedway race and you work with your teammates and you always have the mindset of push each other and get each other as far forward as possible until there are no cars left to pass, and then you work it out amongst yourselves.
“I still say that there’s no doubt in my mind that you come off of turn four and if you’re helping each other all day, then all bets are off at that point – or maybe earlier, I don’t know. But, you know what? It’ll be a race and I think the normal teammate, I don’t know, I wouldn’t even say agreement, but the normal kind of mindset is you’re gonna race each other hard, but be respectful about it.
“Ultimately, you hope that we have three of our Mustangs with the ability to have a shot to win the race at the end and we’ll just duke it out all the way to the line.”
Preece echoed those comments, explaining how they have game planned Saturday night to keep the RFK Ford Mustangs in the mix throughout the race with a shot at the win when it comes time to settle things and capture the checkered flag.
“Chris has always been somebody that I’ve found myself trying to work with, whether I was teammates with him or not, so that makes it that much easier,” said Preece.
“Brad has always been, statistically, when you look at these races, even when he gets wrecked or something happens, he’s racing for the win, so the way I look at this race is our jobs are to get up in the first few rows and work with each other to get there, but if Brad and Chris are in the first two rows, it’s my job to find myself there to work with them and put RFK or one of us in position coming to the line winning.”
Preece added that the overall strength of the company this season gives him confidence that they’ll be in a good position on Saturday night and should one of them make it through to the Playoffs, could be a threat down the stretch.
“Whether that be Chris out front or Brad or myself, you want to be selfish as a driver, but understanding the main goal for the company and the employees and everybody there it’s very important that one of these cars gets into the Playoffs because our speed, we’ve shown it throughout this year,” said Preece.
“Chris has had multiple times where things didn’t come together, myself included as well as Brad, so I think if one of our cars can get into the Playoffs, it’s gonna be a serious threat.”
With qualifying cancelled due to inclement weather, Keselowski will start from 10th place on Saturday, followed by Buescher in 24th, and Preece in 31st.
The Coke Zero Sugar 400 is scheduled for 7:30 pm ET Saturday on NBC.
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