For the second time in 18 months, Ryan Preece walked away from a frightening airborne crash at Daytona International Speedway.
With only five laps to go in Sunday’s (Feb. 16) Daytona 500, second-place Christopher Bell spun right in front of the field after a push gone wrong from Cole Custer. Bell then hit the outside wall and ricocheted directly into the path of Preece’s No. 60 Ford.
A look at the incident on Lap 196 of the #DAYTONA500. pic.twitter.com/6OJa154GZC
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) February 17, 2025
The impact launched Preece’s car into a wheelie, and after gliding in a wheelie-like formation for approximately three seconds, the car landed on its roof, climbed the steep turn 3 banking, impacted the outside wall and flipped back onto its wheels before coming to rest on the apron.
Preece put the window net down and emerged unscathed from his torn-up car, just as he had done in 2023. But while he walked away, the veteran voiced grave concern that it might only be a matter of time in this style of racing before someone won’t be as lucky.
“I don’t know what the right thing to say right now is, but I think the thing I want to say as a father, as a racer is we keep beating on a door, hoping for a different result,” Preece said. “And I think we know where there’s a problem at superspeedways, so I don’t want to be the example when [death] finally does get somebody.
“I don’t want it to be me.”
The Next Gen car’s design was under heavy scrutiny after flips by Corey LaJoie and Josh Berry in back-to-back weeks last season; the decision to add roof rails to the cars at Daytona in August was unsuccessful in keeping them on the ground.
With yet another airborne crash to start 2025 — the fifth at Daytona in NASCAR Cup Series competition since 2022 — Preece raised the same concerns about the car and its propensity for liftoff at high-speed tracks.
“Something needs to be done because cars lifting off the ground like that, that felt honestly felt worse than Daytona in 2023,” Preece added.
“Everything about it [was worse]. Airborne, heading toward the fence, it’s just not a good place to be. With a hit like that, I don’t think it should’ve gone airborne, right?”
That’s a question NASCAR and the industry will ponder for the next two months before the Cup cars return to the faster, longer and higher-banked Talladega Superspeedway in April.
For Preece, it was a disastrous ending to what began as a promising Speedweeks. Days after nearly qualifying on the front row for the race, he ended his Daytona debut with RFK Racing in 32nd.
“I’m just not very happy,” Preece explained. “Ultimately, I think the thing I want to say is we had a really fast car. It’s just, you can only do so much when everybody stacks up. I’m safe, just frustrated.”
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf