Basically, Ryan Preece is standing on deck and his manager just told him ‘we need you to hit a home run here.’
That’s not even entirely a metaphor. That is literally the exchange the RFK Racing No. 60 driver and crew chief had on Saturday morning facing uphill climbs in two different championship battles at New Hampshire and Daytona.
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Preece is 50 points behind Shane Van Gisbergen for the final spot in the NASCAR Cup Series Chase for the Championship. But also, because of his 25-point driver’s penalty for the incident with Ty Gibbs at Texas earlier this season, his car is only 25 points behind SVG’s Trackhouse No. 97 in the owner’s Chase for the Championship.
He has a lot of work to do at New Hampshire and Daytona and likely needs a little bit of attrition to Van Gisbergen or Austin Cindric.
“Personally, I think no matter what, when we go to Daytona we’re on offense,” Preece said on Saturday at New Hampshire. “I would much rather be in Chris (Buescher’s) position or somebody who is 60 points above going into Daytona because it’s really gonna take a Hail Mary or a massive grand slam for somebody to go out and knock (them) out of the playoffs at that point, but, realistically, if we’re within 10 to 15 of Shane or (Cindric) and going into that race we without a doubt have a chance.
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“They’re going to be going into that race with a mindset of, ‘Hey, we need to finish and not put ourselves in jeopardy,’ which you give up stage points and the next thing you know by the end of stage two you’re like, if the person goes out and does what we’ve done in the past of getting a lot of stage points, it puts them in an oh, boy mode. It’s a challenge because you’ve got your owner’s points and that’s 25 points behind Shane, and then you’ve got the driver’s points and that’s 50, so there are two different chases going on for us. For me, I love this place. It’s my home track and I feel like we can definitely take a big bite into that points difference that Shane has on us. We came in with the mindset of trying to go for it all.”
Preece will start ahead of both of those he chased and will have a chance to score stage points starting from the eight row.
What does a home run for him look like?
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“Qualifying up front (and) a lot of stage points,” Preece said. “Contending for a win, if not winning. Without a doubt, I feel like Penske has shown that the short track program for Ford is there. Last week, Austin had a great points day in which he needed, so, for us, I really like the direction that we’re trying to go to of, ‘hey, we need to run well.’
“That’s tough to have because when you do run well, you don’t have those conversations of ‘hey, we ran really great,’ but to the flip side, this is an important one.
“Qualifying. Practice. That all really helps the beginning of the race and I think you guys have seen you can go out and have a ton of stage points in stage one and stage two and finish 12th or 10th and that’s a massive points day. So, you combine that with if Shane has a little bit of bad luck, yeah, there’s definitely a chance. Look at Joey. He’s 150 points from where he was six races ago.”
Watch: Preece reflects on New Hampshire roots, hopes for home-track win
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