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Ryan Preece said the rest of the garage will make sure nobody repeats the breakaway he and his RFK Racing teammates pulled off in Stage 1 at Talladega Superspeedway, and said NASCAR should pay drivers for leading laps if it wants them to race up front.
Preece, Chris Buescher and Brad Keselowski ran flat out together while most of the field saved fuel in the opening stage of Sunday’s YellaWood 500. They built a big lead and finished the stage 1-2-3, with Buescher winning it and Preece second.
‘You’ll never see that again’
“I don’t want to speak a whole lot on it other than you’ll never see that again,” Preece said after the race. “Like you’ll see every team in this garage react and will not allow that to happen ever, ever again. So, yeah, that was pretty neat. Hope you enjoyed it.”
https://x.com/MattWeaverRA/status/2114477814086820234
Buescher and Preece are 16th and 15th in the 16-driver Chase standings, and Keselowski is not in the Chase.
‘Pay lap money’
Preece said the teams police themselves, and suggested a cash bonus for leading laps as a better way to get drivers racing early in a stage.
“No cause we police our own,” Preece said. “Honestly I joked and I sent Steve O’Donnell a text and I don’t know if it went through or yet not, but give lap money. Pay lap money, pay the leader, whoever leads a lap. Bam, you know, I don’t know, fifteen hundred couple grand a lap or something, sell sponsors. Make it, make incentive. Cause to us, our incentive is to get to the end of the stage, not to lead at lap five or ten.”
He said teams will always race to whatever the rules reward. “No matter what you got, no matter what rule they change, we will find a way to, whatever is going to maximize, what we need to be right there at the end of the stage,” Preece said. “And that means riding around at fifty percent throttle until it comes time, that’s what it does.”
Fuel saving at superspeedways
Steve O’Donnell is a senior NASCAR executive. NASCAR used to award bonus points for leading laps before stage racing began in 2017. Today, stage points go only to the top 10 at the end of each stage, which gives drivers a reason to save fuel until the stage ends.
NASCAR changed the stage lengths for this race to match the spring Talladega race, with stages ending on Laps 98, 143 and 188. It said in its announcement of the change that the shorter final stages were meant to cut teams’ incentive to save fuel.
How Preece finished
Preece survived both late crashes and finished 13th. The Cup Series races next at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, on Sunday, November 1, at 2 p.m. ET on NBC.
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