By Luis Torres, Staff Writer/Photographer
Ryan Preece has regained valuable momentum following a two straight top-10 finishes, including a ninth-place outing in last Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
After having a strong start to the race, Preece’s No. 60 RFK Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse fell behind once the track temperatures dropped. Rather than putting himself in position to be on par with his boss and teammate Brad Keselowski, who finished a much-needed season-best fifth.
“I thought Charlotte definitely went through the swing that we all talk about throughout the race,” said Preece during Tuesday’s media availability. “My car benefitted from it pretty early on, but I got behind and that just kind of became a top-10 car where I felt like if we ever got that track position in the first 50 to 100, we had a really solid race car.”
Despite the setback, top-10 result couldn’t have come at a better time as the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Nashville Superspeedway for the annual Cracker Barrel 400 (Sunday at 7 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime). A particular circuit Preece tends to perform extraordinary well with two Truck Series wins and top-15 finishes in Cup to his name as he’ll look to move up the points standings once again.
Before returning into ideal form, Preece had a frustrating April and early May where he had a four-race period where he finished 20th or worse after starting off the year with a career-best six-race start to the campaign.
Those woeful results knocked him down the regular season standings with the disqualification at Talladega, a race he narrowly lost to Austin Cindric, being the No. 60 team’s lowest point.
They’ve since moved forward from the disqualification and a crash at Texas the following race with an encouraging seventh at Kansas. From there, it led to the top-10 at Charlotte where they now hope to continue their resurgence in Tennessee.
Preece explained the key to his success at the 1.33-mile oval boils down to his driving style he grew up adapting.
“It seems to be a little bit more forgiving when it comes to some of the things that I tend to do and I really like it,” said Preece. “I enjoy racing there and a lot of it is about being disciplined with the line there. I don’t necessarily know other than when I’ve gone back and looked and really continue to go back and look, I just like it.”
To put himself in prime position for his first Cup win that’s alluded Preece, his qualifying efforts will have to improve. Outside of two top-five starts, including a front row start at Darlington, he’s qualified outside the top-25 eight times, plummeting his average start to 21.8 after 13 races.
Those struggles is something Preece wished he could honestly explained the “normal occurrence.”
“There have certainly been times where we qualify really well and then there are other times when we qualify really bad,” Preece commented. “There doesn’t seem to be much of an in-between and that’s just something we’re gonna continue to keep working on.”
With the second half of the regular season commencing Sunday, Preece currently holds the 16th and final playoff spot by 13 points over AJ Allmendinger.
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