By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Ryan Preece channeled his inner Shane Falco Saturday night at Daytona International Speedway en route to winning the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at punching his ticket into the Chase for the first time in his career.
Giving a nod to the character played by Keanu Reeves in the movie The Replacements, about a down on his luck quarterback that gets a second shot at playing professionally, leading his team to victory, Preece summed up how his night at the World Center of Racing had just transpired.
“I watched the movie The Replacements and I forgot what his first name was, but Falco and at the end he said, ‘Winners want the ball.’ So, give me the ball,” said Preece.
“Derrick [Finley, crew chief] gave me the ball tonight and I gave the ball to him, so, for me, yeah, we were locked in. There’s just no ifs ands or buts. It was 100 percent about doing nothing other than putting ourselves in position and if we wrecked for the lead, we wrecked for the lead. If I rode around in 30th and didn’t have a chance to win, I’d be mad at myself right now.”
Preece came into Saturday night’s NASCAR Cup Series regular season finale at Daytona with a promise to be on full offense and the driver of the No. 60 RFK Racing Ford was certainly a man of his word, overcoming a 31-point deficit to make it into the Chase, willing his way to victory.
Lining up on the front row for the final restart, with fuel a concern for himself as well as a number of other leaders, Preece and fellow Ford driver Zane Smith were neck and neck through the first set of turns and down the backstretch before finding himself three-wide middle heading into Turn 3.
But as the field took the white flag and made its way through Turn 1-2 for the final time, Preece was able to surge forward with a little help from Daniel Suarez. At nearly the same moment, Smith was jockeying around ahead of Tyler Reddick to try to stay out front when the two made contact.
As a result, Smith went up into the wall as calamity broke out behind him, collecting several cars in the process while Preece was able to secure the lead once and for all.
From there it was just a waiting game to see if it would be a race to the finish or if the caution would fly and end the race under yellow.
It would be the latter, freezing the field with Preece solidly in front of the field ahead of Suarez and Reddick.
Though NASCAR went through its typical video review of the finish, it did not take them long to confirm Preece as the winner, capping off a spectacular run for the No. 60 team.
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“We f****** did it!” Preece exclaimed on the radio once it was confirmed that he was the winner of the race.
“I’m just speechless right now. Those guys, that 60 group, we’re fighters. You put our back against the wall, we swing hard,” Preece said.
“…Two years ago, there was a lot of keyboard warriors saying I was nothing. Well, we just kicked their butts tonight.”
Preece’s charge to the win nearly came undone at the end of Stage 1, however, when he was caught up in an incident involving his RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher and Kyle Larson, but luckily for Preece, it was a harmless slide through the infield grass that he was able to rebound from in short order.
He would go on to earn stage points in the second stage after the spin, setting himself up for the run to the finish over the second half of the race. As they say, the rest is history.
“It’s just a testament to how prepared these race cars are, man. I’m a racer. I know what it takes to build speed. So, every man and woman at RFK, thank you for giving me a rocket ship so I could go to the moon tonight,” Preece said, commending his team for giving him a car capable of overcoming a setback like that.
Suarez and Reddick would be credited with second and third-place finishes, with Michael McDowell and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. rounding out the top-five.
Austin Cindric came home with a sixth-place result to secure his place in the Chase, followed by Austin Dillon, Alex Bowman, Josh Berry, and Cole Custer.
Shane van Gisbergen, who started the night on the bubble, looked to be in the catbird seat as the race played out, having won the first stage and finishing in the points in the second stage, but with fuel a concern with the laps winding down, the No. 97 team elected to bring him down pit road for fuel, which seemingly started to unravel his night.
As he battled forward following the pit stop, van Gisbergen could ill-afford a Preece victory, aside from that, if he climbed up the leaderboard enough, he would be able to build enough of a buffer to make it through.
However, van Gisbergen was one of the drivers swept up in the crash on the last lap, ultimately finishing in 28th place and leaving Daytona as the unlucky driver to be the first one on the outside looking in.
“It’s pretty fresh now, but congratulations to the No. 60 (Ryan Preece). One night doesn’t sum up the year for this No. 97 Red Bull Chevrolet team. We just weren’t good enough tonight, but it’s been cool to be this close,” said van Gisbergen.
“Bit of the regular season has been good, but as a team, obviously we’ve struggled. But I’m proud that I’ve been able to match my teammates on the ovals. I think I’ve stepped it up this year. Obviously, you want to be in the Chase, but we were just short.”
Preece gave van Gisbergen his props after the race, noting that the No. 97 team gave them a real fight to make it through to the Chase and it was going to take Saturday night’s win to make it happen.
“I knew if I go and win, I’m pretty confident we’re going to make it in. That 20 points is a big deal,” said Preece. “As a race car driver, Shane did everything right tonight. He’s a hell of a race car driver. He’s a hell of a road course racer, but he’s a hell of a race car driver.
“He knew that I had my knee on the throat or my thumb on the pressure point, and he answered that in stage one. When he threw that right hook, metaphorically, in a metaphor, I felt like I answered that back in stage two, so…I’m proud of the racer I am. I’m proud of competing against him.
“The bar he sets on road courses, because he’s a true talent that we’re lucky to have here in the United States, but I’m happy New England beat New Zealand today,” Preece concluded with a grin.
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