Preece storms into NASCAR Cup Chase with first career win at Daytona

Short on fuel in the late going, but with no dearth of tenacity, Ryan Preece won Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway in overtime to force his way into the NASCAR Cup Series Chase.

“I'm just speechless right now,” said Preece, who claimed the final berth the Chase by 17 points over Shane van Gisbergen. The three-time Australian Supercars champion had led Preece by 31 points entering the regular-season finale.

“But those guys, that 60 group, we're fighters,” Preece continued. “When you put our back against the wall, we swing hard… Last year there were a lot of keyboard warriors saying I was nothing. Well, we just kicked their butts tonight.”

In winning his first Cup Series points race, Preece recovered from a three-car wreck at the end of the first stage that damaged his left front fender, but after repairs, he was able to power his No. 60 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford back to the front.

Stretching fuel mileage over the final 65-lap stage, Preece surged into the lead past Tyler Reddick and Zane Smith in overtime moments before Smith turned into the outside wall to ignite a series of collisions that forced NASCAR to call the fourth yellow of the evening — with Preece ahead at the moment of caution.

“It's a testament of how prepared these race cars are, man. I'm a racer. I know what it takes to build speed. So, to every man and woman at RFK, thank you for giving me a rocket ship so I could go to the moon tonight. This is redemption.”

In a race that went six laps beyond its scheduled distance of 160 laps, Preece led three times for a total of five laps. Eschewing a pit stop in the final stage, he was running second when Carson Hocevar made an aggressive move to the inside entering Turn 3 to cause the lap 155 wreck that forced overtime.

Hocevar steered his Spire Motorsports Chevrolet toward the bottom lane, but the rear of the car snapped loose, propelling the No. 77 Camaro into the outside wall. Erik Jones’ Toyota plowed violently into Hocevar’s car along the outside wall, as Ty Gibbs’ Camry spun down the track.

“Yeah, I was always super tight behind people, it seemed,” said Hocevar, who picked up his first career win at Talladega in April. “So, I just changed from top to bottom there, and that was the first time I really got a ton of air on my nose into three and I just lost it. It just kept going. I had the wheel straight, man.

“It just kept going with all the air and something down on the nose. I'm shocked that it did that. It caught me off guard, for sure. It was nice to ride around all day like we'd kind of planned, and then we gave ourselves a shot to win it at the end. We were up front, had track position and led laps, and that's all I can really ask for from a team standpoint. Overall, I thought we did a pretty good job here tonight.”

Hocevar’s accident set up the overtime restart with Smith in the lead. After pushing Smith on the white-flag lap, Reddick made a move to the outside, but he and Smith tangled on the final circuit to start the race-ending melee on the backstretch.

Daniel Suarez avoided the chaos and finished second, followed by Reddick, Michael McDowell and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. Austin Cindric came home sixth and clinched the 15th seed in the Chase by nine points over Preece, who will start the postseason as the 16th seed.

“We were so close, two years in a row with a second-place finish,” Suarez said of his run in the No. 7 Spire Chevrolet. “Super happy and proud to make it to the Chase with this team. This team deserves it.

“I feel like in the past, I’ve had runs in the postseason where I didn’t think we were strong enough to really contend. But this team deserves to be in the Chase. We are a Chase team. There are so many people and partners that have helped us get here and put this kind of performance together.”

Austin Dillon, Alex Bowman, Josh Berry, and Cole Custer completed the top 10. Berry posted his fifth straight top-10 result in the No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.

Bubba Wallace finished 20th after clinching the 14th seed in the Chase with a seventh-place result in the first stage.

Van Gisbergen worked his way into a strong position with a win in Stage 1, as Preece, RFK teammate Chris Buescher and Kyle Larson spun into the infield grass approaching the finish line to end the stage.

Late in the race, however, van Gisbergen came to pit road for fuel on lap 157 and opted for four new tires. That put him 27th for the overtime restart, and from that position he was unable to avoid the multicar wreck on the final lap. The New Zealander finished 28th and out of the Chase.

Denny Hamlin had clinched top seeding in the Chase, along with a 25-point advantage, last Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He’ll start the Chase with 2,100 points. Despite wrecking on the final lap and finishing 33rd, Ryan Blaney picked up the Stage 2 win and held the second seed to start the Chase with 2,075 points.

The remaining seeds in order are: Reddick, Gibbs, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell, Larson, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Buescher, Suarez, Hocevar, William Byron, Wallace, Cindric and Preece.

The Chase begins on Sunday, Sept. 6 with the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (5 p.m. ET on USA, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

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