DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.: Make no mistake about it, Ryan Preece and his Stewart-Haas Racing team believe they made a statement two weeks ago at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
But while their superior performance didn’t end with a win because of a mechanical gremlin, their efforts certainly gave a wakeup call to the other competitors and teams in the industry that Preece and his “warriors” are ready to win.
And ready to win now.
With just a one-year contract as the driver of the No. 41 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang, Preece believes he does not have most of the season or even the Playoffs to prove his worth, he believes he has less than four months.
“Really, I think you have got about 14 races to prove yourself. I’ve said it before I’m used to not knowing what I am doing until October or November – it never has stressed me out a whole lot. I feel that the Coliseum, it laid a good foundation of expectations and it’s exactly what I expected.”
While running at the front may have surprised some, Preece wasn’t surprised. After all, he’s spent the last year around the trenches of Stewart-Haas Racing and the chemistry between he and crew chief Chad Johnston has appeared to accelerate from their Nashville Superspeedway win in Trucks to the pinnacle of the sport.
Looking back at the Busch Clash, Preece said the weekend, other than their mechanical hiccup went exactly as planned and it’s important to keep his motivation up and his warriors upbeat because he is the first to admit that winning is not easy.
“It’s exactly what I expected,” recalled Preece of the Clash. “I’ve been very adamant that we need to go and consistently running up front and contending for wins. It’s easier said than done.
“So, I think for us, from our point of view it was good for our team. Yeah, people can say it was a quarter mile, it’s totally different. But racing and passing race cars and speed still was a thing. That’s something we had.
“The foundation, especially after LA is solid. I feel like we have a lot of warriors on our team and we are ready to go to battle.”
With the Clash in the rear-view mirror, Daytona is on deck and Preece and Johnston look to put Stewart-Haas Racing back in Victory Lane in the sport’s most prestigious race.
“Win,” said Preece. “That’s it. That’s the only thing. That’s the only thing that matters.”
That mentality though reaches far beyond just the Daytona 500 – it is the tone for the entire 36-schedule which ends in November at Phoenix (Ariz.) Raceway.
“(It’s) the confidence I have in the people around me,” he said. “It’s people that I know when I show up to this race track and I drive in through that tunnel, I am going to war and ready to try to win this race and I don’t show up thinking I can’t.”
Preece is well aware that winning may be difficult, but he’s up for the challenge. But he also realizes that sometimes in the Daytona 500, you get lucky and the doors open to Victory Lane. If that happened for him on Sunday, he’d be OK with that too.
“My season started in November when I got the job. Personally, I look at this (Daytona 500) race as an opportunity to try and lock yourselves into the Playoffs. I think Denny Hamlin actually said someone can luck into it once but not twice or three times. I
“’m okay if I luck into it once but I know I have done a lot of preparation to make sure we put ourselves in the right spot at the right time typically into Turn 3.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01 or email: [email protected]
