Winston-Salem, North Carolina — Wednesday night’s Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium was the race that didn’t seem like it would ever end. 17 cautions constantly broke up the on-track action, and kept the race out of rhythm, but when the checkered flag did eventually fly three hours after the green flag was shown in NASCAR’s annual preseason exhibition event, a feel-good story was celebrating in victory lane, as Ryan Preece broke through for his first-career NASCAR Cup Series race win.
While not a points-paying win, it was still an emphatic statement for a driver who has done everything in his power to remain a full-time competitor in the NASCAR Cup Series despite less-than-stellar equipment in the early years of his career. Preece was zeroing in on victory lane throughout the entirety of his first season with RFK Racing a year ago.
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Wednesday nght, he broke through.
“I don’t even know what to say, to be honest with you, it’s been a long f—ing road,” an emotional Preece said in his post-race interview on FS2. “You know, it’s the Clash, but man, it’s just been years and years of grinding. I’m just super thankful for Brad Keselowski, Kroger, Coca-Cola, all our partners.”
“Two years ago, I didn’t think I was going to have a job. I thought I was going back to Connecticut,” Preece continued, choking back tears. “Man, I am super, super, super emotional.”
Preece was masterful on late-race restarts, which allowed him to stretch out to a 1.7-second lead over the competition by the time the checkered flag was dropped at the conclusion of Lap 200.
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While Wednesday marked the first win for Preece and the No. 60 RFK Racing team, they now have a goal to just keep winning, going forward.
“Over the Winter, we made the commitment that we’re going to start winning,” crew chief Derrick Finley said in his post-race press conference. “You know, and we had the consistency last year as a group, especially with the points format changing the way they are, more of a points format, the one thing we were lacking last year was winning.”
Finley continued, “To be able to come out in the first race of the year and do that, even in an exhibition race, it means a lot to us, right? It’s like, hey, we can do it, we know what we need to do to do it, and we’re going to do it. It’s how we’re going to go, it’s how we’re approaching this year. We are going to win multiple times.”
William Byron, who battled Ryan Blaney in the closing laps, came home with a runner-up finish, while Blaney followed up his runner-up finish in this event a year ago with a solid third-place result.
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Daniel Suarez ended the night with a fourth-place finish, but he was a topic of much conversation throughout the night as he had constant run-ins with other drivers in the field, including Bubba Wallace and Shane van Gisbergen, his former teammate.
In the end, Suarez got the last laugh over his rivals with a top-five finish in his first start behind the wheel of the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
According to Suarez, the incident with Wallace occurred due to confusion over when the caution flag for the mid-race break would come out.
“Actually with Bubba, it was just a misunderstanding. With Bubba, it wasn’t a big deal, but he doesn’t know that yet,” Suarez explained after the race. “I didn’t know we were done, because they said to keep going, and I guess he slowed down, and I think he thought I was mad at him, and he started to get crazy, and then he cooled down himself. I wasn’t mad at him at all. I was mad at a couple of other people, but not to him.”
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As for others, like van Gisbergen, Suarez had an explanation for how he raced them.
“I race people the same way they race me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not racist,” Suarez quipped. “I love everyone. If they give me love, I give love. If they give me hate, I give hate. That’s just the way it works.”
Suarez says while he didn’t see eye to eye with van Gisbergen during the race, he will not talk it out with his former teammate following Wednesday night’s race.
Denny Hamlin, who admittedly didn’t utilize his usual level of preparation ahead of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season and revealed that he tore his right shoulder in the offseason while combing through the rubble at his parents’ housefire, came home with a solid fifth-place finish, despite being involved in a few of the incidents on the night.
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While the end result was a feel-good win for Preece, the 2026 Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray will be remembered as the race that was twice delayed by an historic winter-weather storm in North Carolina. Once the race went green on Wednesday, it was a tale of two races.
The first half of Wednesday night’s race was honestly very good. The second half, was anything but, as rain and sleet caused a 30-minute delay in the action, and sent the race into wet-weather tire racing, which led to caution, after caution, after caution.
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on Sunday, February 15. That race will serve as the official kick-off for the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series slate of 36 points-paying races. That race will be televised on FOX with coverage set to kick off at 2:30 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Ryan Preece Scores Emotional Win in Seemingly Never-Ending Clash.
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