Ryan Preece knows all too well what the backstretch at Daytona looks like from midair. He went for a wild ride back in 2023, pirouetting through the air after his NASCAR Ford race car was tossed off the track after going sideways on Daytona’s “superstretch.” Unfortunately, he had the chance to see the racetrack from an unconventional vantage point once again during the 2025 Daytona 500, when a wreck shot his No. 60 Ford Mustang Dark Horse up on two wheels before sending it side-over-side in Turn 3.
The wreck began when the No. 20 Toyota TRD Camry of Christopher Bell went sideways in front of the pack. Bell had been racing alongside Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Camry when a shot from the No. 41 Mustang of Cole Custer turned him sideways, sending him into the field. Preece was swept up in the melee when Bell spun back across traffic and slammed into him.
The front wheels of Preece’s No. 60 NASCAR Ford lifted slightly and made contact with the No. 43 Camry of Erik Jones, causing it to rear up on its back tires.
Momentum carried Preece forward with the nose of his No. 60 Mustang in the air before it finally went sideways enough to turn it over. He flipped once before landing back on all fours and backing into the outside retaining wall, spinning around again before sliding back down the banking and coming to a halt.
Preece was able to exit the race car under his own power, although he was understandably shaken after the incident.
“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, but when the car took off like that and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter,” Preece said in a postrace interview with Fox Sports. “So I’m lucky to walk away. But we’re getting really close to somebody not being able to.”
The No. 60 NASCAR Ford is credited with a 32nd-place finish.
Comments
Here is a hint. Do something that should have been done forty years ago and radically flatten the turns at Talladega and Daytona. The drivers would actually forced to lift and drive instead of participating in this ridiculous centrifuge dance called pack racing.
And drive straight into a fence at 200 mph??
You obviously missed the “lift and drive” part of my comment.
They’re not going to lift……….. that’s what tracks like Michigan are for. And they still end up on their roofs.
Mustangs are very strong. My 1980 Mustang was hit by a city bus one night, which pushed me several feet before we stopped. But my only damage was the front left fender. I drove home after that and in a week it was repaired.