Ryan Preece explains "shitty situation" leading late at Daytona

In the closing laps of the Daytona cutoff race, Ryan Preece found himself in the lead. The No. 60 RFK Racing Ford was in a must-win situation, and this position seemed oddly familiar for him.

Preece positioned himself exactly as he did in another superspeedway earlier this year, leading the outside line with the checkered flag just a few laps away.

And while it seemed like he had found the perfect spot to potentially earn his first career Cup win, circumstances said otherwise. He had been split up from teammate Chris Buescher, who was on the inside pushing Justin Haley alongside Preece. But that wasn’t the problem.

In position to win the race

Ryan Preece, RFK Racing Ford; Kyle Larson, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet; Justin Haley, Spire Motorsports Chevrolet; Chris Buescher, RFK Racing Ford

Photo by: Chris Graythen – Getty Images

The issue was the fact that two Hendrick Motorsports cars were directly behind Preece. A victory for him would knock their teammate Alex Bowman from the playoffs, and they weren’t going to just let that happen. Coming to two laps to go, they split Preece and sent him back through the middle, ending his shot at the victory. He ended up finishing a disappointing 14th.

“Man, I felt like we were gonna win that race,” said Preece after the race. “You want to talk about having the best scenario play out for how we wanted it to, I was just leaving the 7 [Haley] there. The 17 [Buescher] was doing a great job just letting him stay there and there’s nothing you can do. The problem is you know the 9 [Chase Elliott] and the 5 [Kyle Larson] were worried about their teammate that would have been bumped out, so it was a shitty situation. We did everything right today, and it just didn’t work out.”

There wasn’t much Preece could do but push on and hope it all worked out, but it didn’t.

“Frustrated,” continued Preece. “I did everything right, put the car where I needed to be .. If I had Chris right behind or if I could have gotten in the same line, that would have been best case scenario.”

Instead, all three RFK drivers missed the playoffs in a big blow to the organization — one that was looking to get two in on points if there weren’t 14 different winners in the first 16 races.