Ryan Preece was thinking about what really matters in life, as his No. 60 car was airborne with just five laps to go in the 67th running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday night.
Preece was in the middle of the pack when a wreck at the top of the race impacted him in the worst way, with Christopher Bell’s No. 20 car smashing into him, causing his vehicle to fly through the Florida night.
When Preece’s car touched the track again, it was flipped upside down, still traveling at a high rate of speed before ultimately getting back to normal and slamming into the wall.
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NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Preece, #60, gets airborne after a wreck during the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. (Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images)
Thankfully, Preece walked out of the wreck unscathed, though there was a moment while he was in the air that he started to think about family, specifically his daughter, Rebecca Marie.
“Yeah, I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what that makes these cars like a sheet of plywood when you walk out on a windy day,” Preece told FOX Sports in an interview after getting off the track.
“But, when the car took off like that, and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter. So, I’m lucky to walk away.”
Multiple angles of the wreck showed just how scary the wreck was, including a look from the No. 43 car of Erik Jones, who was involved in the spin-outs as well.
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From Jones’ vantage point, Bell’s car coming off the right wall came out of nowhere, and Preece got all of it.
The front of the vehicle immediately lifted into the air, and like Preece said, the windy conditions – two delays came in this race from inclement weather – made the car lift off the track altogether.
NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Preece, #60, gets airborne after a wreck during the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. (Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images)
This is the second time in Preece’s career he has flipped at Daytona, so while he has experienced this before, it is never a good feeling to have to go through that.
Preece was reflective with Frontstretch after the race as well, adding that “something needs to be done” with the cars because they should not be lifting off the course like he did.
“The one thing I want to say as a father, as a racer, is we keep beating on a door hoping for a different result. We know where there’s a problem at Superspeedways. So, I don’t want to be the example of when it finally gets somebody – I don’t want it to be me. I got a two-year-old daughter, and just like a lot of us, we have families.
NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Preece, #60, gets airborne after a wreck during the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway. (Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images)
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“So, something needs to be done because cars lifting off the ground like that, that honestly felt worse than Daytona in ’23.”
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