HAMPTON, Ga.—For his magnificent, yet terrifying airborne adventures on the race track, Ryan Preece has earned the moniker “Rocketman” from his fellow Roush Fenway Keselowski teammates.
“Crash Test Dummy” might be more accurate after Preece flipped twice at Daytona International Speedway in the last two years. The 34-year-old racer made fun of his recent liftoffs by picturing himself in an astronaut’s uniform on social media following his horrific wreck last Sunday.
And while Preece simply feels lucky to have walked away, he admits a crash of that magnitude isn’t like landing on a pile of pillows.
“As much as I’m fine, it’s not like you don’t feel it,” Preece said. “You definitely feel it.
“I joked with my wife that I’m like a cat with nine lives right now—and you don’t want to use all nine of them.”
One of the first things Preece mentioned after climbing from the No. 60 Roush Fenway Keselowski Ford following the wreck was all he could think of was his 18-month-old daughter, Rebecca. Fortunately, his wife, Heather, had put her down to sleep prior to the incident and turned off the TV. Heather was listening on the team radio when the accident occurred.
“She heard the spotter say, ‘They’re wrecking…oh, we’re in it, you’re flipping,’ then she scrambled to find a shot of it,” Preece said. “She knew because she was listening to the radio that I was OK.
“My wife raced. So she understands. That’s actually how I met her. I raced against her. So she understands that there are risks in place. She jokes with me, ‘You don’t have to do this.’ But I love doing this. It’s what I do for a living. It’s how I provide for my family. This is what I’ve grown up doing all of my life.
“I’m grateful for the situation I’m in with all of the partners we have, having the support and fast race cars with RFK and being teammates with Chris (Buescher) and Brad (Keselowski). I’m excited for the season and ready to go.”
Preece said he’s not going to change his driving style or his safety protocol. Personally, he’s numb to the dangers of racing and believes that race car drivers need to be tough.
“As a race car driver—whether you drive sprint cars or whatever—you understand there’s a chance you could flip,” Preece said. “We’ve been watching cars flip at superspeedways forever. It was just really how that car took off. When it did, that caught me off guard.”
When it comes to superspeedway racing as a whole, Preece doesn’t believe NASCAR needs to change the parameters. With cars traveling three-wide at over 180 miles per hour, accidents are going to happen. When it comes to solving the dilemma of cars launching off each other, Preece is more than happy to offer input if asked. But he doesn’t have a solution.
“I’m just a race car driver,” Preece said. “I’m not an aeronautical engineer. I don’t study CFD (computational fluid dynamics). I don’t go to the wind tunnel. I don’t see how much lift or downforce these cars make at certain ride heights.
“What I do know is that we’re in a really tough spot. We’re in a tough spot because the Fords make a lot of downforce. It’s a tough spot to be in because what things do you change to stop the lift? There has to be a way to relieve the pressure from the air that lifts off this car, that takes the car off of the ground.”
Keselowski, who is both a teammate and team owner of Preece’s, agrees. After the garage worked tirelessly to gain an aerodynamic advantage with the underbody of the car, NASCAR created a carbon fiber sheet to cover that area on the NextGen car. Additional changes to the diffuser and strakes have been made to lessen the severity of liftoff but the modifications didn’t keep Preece on the asphalt.
“I think there are some ideas they could do,” Keselowski said. “I’d hate to say there is nothing. There’s going to have to be something tweaked on the underbody to do that, but I don’t know what that is. We didn’t have this problem with other generations of the car. That seems to be the common denominator.”
As for watching his new teammate/driver go flying through the air?
“You just hope he’s OK,” Keselowski said. “It’s certainly not ideal. Hate that for him. First and foremost, it’s about keeping him safe. just hope he’s alright.
“He’s doing good. He’s got a new name, ‘Rocketman,’ which is good. When you’re with a group of dudes, you know you’re like when they’re making fun of you. Ryan is working hard. He’s pushed himself. He’s grown a lot in the last three or four months. After he gets this Daytona thing behind him and heads into the season, he’s going to turn some heads.”
Preece applauds NASCAR’s ongoing commitment to making the cars as safe as possible. He knows the sanctioning body is reviewing the data from his crash at Daytona and others’ accidents to keep airborne cars at a minimum.
“I don’t want to see a car in that kind of wreck take off like that,” Preece said. “As a sport, we’ve been really proactive on safety. And they always have been. I’m lucky to be racing in this era of racing where you look at our seats, you look at all the safety measures that we go through as teams and what NASCAR puts in place.
“I just want to keep seeing us head down that path of stopping something that could put us in a bad spot.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
