Midway through the 2024 Coca-Cola 600, Ryan Preece found himself yet again languishing at the back of the pack. What had been billed as a dream opportunity for him to join Stewart-Haas Racing, a multi-car powerhouse with a championship pedigree, had by this point turned to the grim reality of being collateral damage of the organization’s terminal decline.
Despite taking the wheel of a No. 41 car that had won the Daytona 500 and many more races in the past, it had become well and apparent that Preece did not have what he needed to win races. Rather, he had to shoulder many burdens in trying to carry his car and his team forward — all the way to the point of having to play crew chief from the cockpit and motivate his actual crew chief atop the pit box.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. wins in his first race as a NASCAR crew chief in Xfinity Series one-off at Pocono
Steven Taranto
“I’m gonna go with that did not wake the front up, and it didn’t do what we need to,” Preece said after a caution came out. “So, I don’t care how much track position we lose right now, I can’t even maintain what I have.”
“OK, but everything that I do that is the direction that I think is wrong,” replied his crew chief, seemingly sulking. “So, I can pick a direction on the front, but I don’t know that it’s gonna be right because everything else that I’ve done is wrong.”
“Well, you need to be right now the leader — like I know you can be — and let’s figure it the f–k out,” Preece said in return. “Because we’ve got 600 miles, 220 laps to pull this together. Let’s make a direction and figure it out.”
In just over a year since then, the situation for Preece has changed dramatically. After Stewart-Haas Racing sold its assets and shut down at the end of 2024, Preece not only landed with a new third team at RFK Racing, but has been better for it. As the driver of RFK’s No. 60 Ford, Preece is in the middle of the best season of his Cup career, with a career-high six top 10s through 16 races putting him right in the thick of the fight to make the NASCAR playoffs later this season.
On the surface, Preece reaching his potential as a Cup driver after many years of clawing his way up from stardom in the Whelen Modified Tour is the product of him being put in the right situation at RFK Racing, where he is both part of an organization on the rise and has a car owner in Brad Keselowski that believes in him. But speaking to CBS Sports, Preece shared that there’s another contributing factor at play: an open mind, particularly when it comes to the car he’s driving and trusting the people working on it.
“I went in with an open mind of ‘I’m gonna work on me, I’m gonna trust the process and I’m gonna continue to push myself.’ And that comes with doing more listening than I do talking, having a different perspective going into the weekends, and really just having a big, open mind when it comes to a lot of things,” Preece said. “There’s definitely times where I almost know too much for my own good when it comes to race cars, and you can come up with preconceived notions. So, I’m trying to definitely get back to the Ryan Preece that just drove race cars instead of just ones that I set up.
“There’s certainly times where you can help find the direction of what you need to make the car better, but right now it’s just trying to focus on the little areas that I need to be better at, and then maximizing and using the strengths that I have in the right opportunity.”
Considering he made his way to Cup in a hard scrabble, old-fashioned manner — from short track stardom in Modifieds to lesser Xfinity cars, to better Xfinity cars and then lesser Cup cars — Preece can speak on good authority to what goes into hitting the balance, from spring splits to wedge to nose weight, aerodynamics and how it all comes together to make a car handle properly. Trusting the process, though, has gotten Preece closer and closer to the feel he wants in his cars. And following through on the roadmap of driver responsibilities laid out to him by Brad Keselowski before the start of the season has optimized Preece’s performance both on the racetrack and as a team leader.
As things stand, there’s a good chance Preece can get his first career win before the end of the regular season. In fact, it almost happened at Talladega, where Preece ran second in a photo finish before eventually being disqualified for improprieties with the rear spoiler found in post-race tech inspection. But there’s a subtext in saying that Preece can win. If he wants to contend for a championship come the fall, he probably needs to.
Entering last weekend’s race in Mexico City, Preece had been tied for the final spot above the playoff cut line with Kyle Busch, and he should have been able to take command of that spot after winning a stage and running 15th while Busch crashed out on lap seven. But a win by Shane van Gisbergen, a road course specialist who had entered Mexico 33rd in points, bumped the cut line down and bumped Preece 19 points below the new line entering Pocono this weekend.
Not that the added degree of difficulty is a problem for Preece. After all, his big break in NASCAR came when he opted to take his sponsor to a two-race opportunity in one of Joe Gibbs Racing’s Xfinity cars, knowing that he likely needed to win to get a real shot moving forwards — and did so.
“I thrive off pressure. I enjoy it,” Preece said. “There’s people that when it comes time for the Championship 4 or whatever — I haven’t been in that situation in the Cup Series, so I can’t speak on that. But what I can speak on is life-changing moments that I’ve had, and in those moments I’ve succeeded. And that’s because when someone’s back is against the wall, I’m not somebody that’s gonna curl up in a corner and just take what I get. I’m gonna fight.
“For me it’s approaching every weekend like it’s my last and trying to win. And not doing something stupid — I feel like I’m always pretty smart about the decisions that I make behind the wheel. I definitely have a checklist of things that we’re continuing to work on, I’m continuing to work on. When we nail it all down, I’m ready to go to war.”
Interestingly, the battle right now is between Preece and his RFK Racing teammate Chris Buescher, who had told CBS Sports in Nashville he is taking a must-win approach to the second half of the regular season despite being in a sound points position. When asked if he agreed with Buescher’s mentality, Preece affirmed the answer was yes — to a point.
“If you’re in our situation or anybody below us, I think you’re at that point where you need to think about winning,” Preece said. “Now, you can’t do it at the sacrifice of ‘Am I gonna take this risk and finish third, but at the same time I have the potential to finish 30th?’ Because you kind of have gotta do both. You need to put yourself in position to have great days, but take the opportunities to win the race when you can.
“Because you’ve seen it, there’s some people that run 28th and then Daytona or a road course, if things go your way, you don’t even think about the other 17 or however many races that you may have not ran very well, but had one win and it changes your entire season or outlook on that season. Our goal is to win and win multiple times.”
A win before the end of the regular season would give Preece even more to smile about than he already has. Last weekend in Mexico City, Preece drove the Colgate Ford coinciding with a new ad campaign for Colgate, one of the many consumer brands Preece and RFK Racing have had adorn their cars this season through a partnership with Kroger — which, in an era where so many NASCAR sponsorships are business-to-business deals, harkens back to past times where consumer brands dominated the grid and connected race fans to their favorite drivers and teams through the products they used every day.
“I brush my teeth every day, I use mouthwash every day,” Preece said. “And obviously having a partner like Colgate, being able to do some of the commercials we do along with the other brands that Kroger and (BAM Marketing and Tad Geschickter) bring to the table, it’s a lot of fun for us. Because we not only are easily able to promote those things outside of just driving the race car, we’re also able to relate and push all the different ones that we use every day, and get our race fans that are loyal to us to go buy them too.”
UAB Medicine will serve as the title sponsor of the UAB Medicine GT World Alabama, scheduled for Sept. 5-7 at Barber Motorsports Park. The event will feature the GT World Challenge America racing series and aims to support Teal Wings of Hope, a Birmingham-based nonprofit organization focused on education, awareness and advocacy for individuals affected by ovarian cancer.
