For the first time ever, the NASCAR Cup Series got to experience a full episode of The Ryan Preece Show because Wednesday night in the Cookout Clash was exactly that.
It was also the unedited, unfiltered ‘fuck yeah’ version of the show, too.
This was Preece Lightning, the 2013 Whelen Modified Tour champion, and a racer who was the man to beat every time he unloaded across the eastern seaboard for almost a decade. This was the racer who was a loose cannon of sorts on the microphone and undeniable behind the steering wheel.
Preece was a familiar sight on Wednesday to anyone that followed him in Tour Type Modified racing when he built his initial claim to fame.
While listening to him over the radio during the race, it would be easy to think Preece came across like a driver who had something amiss with his race car. It would be easy to think he was mad.
“Man, visibility is going to be a bitch. Just so you know. Terrible.”
“I’m pretty confident I know what is going to happen, nothing good but we cannot see a damn thing.”
“So whoever it is (who made the decision to race in the rain), we should probably go find their car, take the windshield.”
In fact, upon reaching the media center, it wasn’t winning the race that the media most wanted to discuss with Preece.
“I think I know what you want to ask.”
His scanner chatter.
“Exactly, I knew it.”
Listen, when Preece is feeling confident and capable of winning, he historically has no filter. He is a gunslinger on the button, and it’s a sign that things are going well, not poorly.
“Honestly, there’s just a lot of passion behind me,” Preece said. “Anybody who works with me knows I come across, I’m extremely focused to the point that sometimes it can look like arrogance.”
When he started 18th, mostly due to an unfortunate qualifying order based on his points from last year, he knew it would be a challenge to win this race. That he even raced into the top-10 and then the top-5 was enough to ignite the fire that is The Ryan Preece Show.
“That’s not what you want to be like as a racer,” Preece said. “You want to talk about, ‘Man, we got the pole, won the race,’ all those things. I knew the challenge. Starting 18th, getting to 9th, having the (halftime) break, pulling out and make adjustments. I got (crew chief Derrick Finley) right here who does a great job. It starts raining.”
Historically, this is where the Ryan Preece Show features the eponymous main character and his father, Jeff. The Preece’s are racers’ racers. Ryan can work on cars as well as drive them, and that was what he did with his father on his way up the ladder, and even still to this day.
In this case, Preece deferred to his work dad, Finley.
“To me, I don’t care what type of a race car driver you are, it’s 35 degrees,” Preece said. “You don’t know where you need to be for air pressure or adjustments or all these things. When they set these race cars up, they’re in for dry conditions. You work really hard to get to that level.”
And yet, Finley had the winning approach to take the lead on wet tires in the rain but also to stay fast on the same tires after the track had dried out. Preece and Finley won what is their first win each, together, in the same fashion that Ryan Jeff had for years in New England.
So to do it that way, and a grassroots short track where Preece had previously won on the NASCAR Modified Tour back in 2013, it meant a lot and very much felt familiar and nostalgic at the same time.
“Yeah, there was a lot of emotions here,” Preece said. “Obviously I’m on the good side of it right now. I’m extremely happy and proud to have had this opportunity to be holding this trophy at a racetrack that I won here 12 years ago or 10 years ago, whatever it was. This was part of that journey, to be at the Cup level.
“I’ve been doing this full-time for the most part since 2019. I remember I was going to, like, I’m not kidding, move back to Connecticut two years ago. The stars aligned and this opportunity at RFK came about. I remember there were nights (where) I thought, ‘Is this going to come together’ or ‘am I just going to be another story where it falls apart in the last second?’
“I’m grateful that it happened because I got this guy right here. I have our entire group, which is special working on this race car. I know, because when I build race cars, I do these things, it’s not easy to build speed. You have to have passionate people behind you. That’s what we have.”
For his part, Finley intends this season of The Ryan Preece Show to feature a lot of winning. He was proud of how their new No. 60 team came together last year, and the consistency they showed, but he tasked everyone with winning this year.
“To be able to come out the first race of the year, do that, even an exhibition race, it means a lot to us, right,” Preece said. “We can do it, we know what we need to do it, we’re going to do it. That’s how we’re going to do. That’s how we’re approaching this year. We are going to win multiple times.”
And while Preece is now a bonafide Cup Series star, and certainly a Cup Series winner, this episode of the Ryan Preece Show ended the way so many of them did over the past 15 year. It ended with Preece in Victory Lane and preparing to hop in the truck onto the next short track race.
Even not anticipating a win, Preece was prepared to leave Winston-Salem on Wednesday night and drive down to New Smyrna Beach, Florida where he will spend the next week racing a Tour Type Modified and Super Late Model in the days leading up to the Daytona 500.
So much for celebrating?
“Brother, I’ll celebrate in New Smyrna, Daytona,” Preece said. “I race, man. It’s what it’s about. This is going to make that drive a hell of a lot better because in seven hours, I figure I’ll get to my house at about midnight, get to New Smyrna about 7 a.m.; we’ll just grind it out, have a couple of Celsiuses, maybe some coffee. I’ll sleep on Thursday night.”
Even on his way out the track, RFK Racing communications director Mike Massaro was telling Preece all the media obligations he had on Thursday. Preece said he would make every one of them, but he needed to leave ASAP to keep his schedule.
The Ryan Preece Show is so back and on its biggest and brightest stage yet.
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