RFK Racing driver Ryan Preece suffered a major accident in the closing laps of the 2025 Daytona 500. His No. 60 Ford Mustang lifted off the ground, went airborne, and flipped before landing on its wheels. The consensus was to blame the Next Gen car and its aerodynamics. However, Austin Cindric expressed a different viewpoint in Atlanta.
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The Team Penske driver had nearly won the Great American Race before crashing out in the final lap. He contended that it is normal for a car’s nose to pop up when there is side-by-side contact.
He pointed out how it happened in Bowman Gray, a short track where cars race relatively at a slower pace. So, it is only natural for the same to happen in a superspeedway.
He added, “I feel like any car, at 160-170 miles an hour, if you popped the nose off the ground three or four feet you are going to get air to parachute under the car no matter how flat the floor is. I am not an engineer, I don’t study these things, but I’ve seen enough cars to have an understanding of how the car is going to work if you pool air up under the car.”
Preece’s car was hit on the right side by Christopher Bell. Cindric argues that this was the core incident that led the car’s nose to pop up and allow air underneath it.
He concluded, “I am sure Ryan [Preece] has a little different take on that but I would say that is why the car got into the air, because of contact not because of being put into a bad aero spot.”
What Ryan Preece said about the Next Gen car following the accident
The crash was Preece’s second big one in Daytona. The first came in 2023 when his car flipped in the air and barrel-rolled multiple times before coming to a halt.
Fortunately, he did not suffer much physical damage in either situation. But the repetition did leave him overtly frustrated with the Next Gen car.
He told the press, “Yeah, I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what that makes these cars like a sheet of plywood when you walk out on a windy day. But when the car took off like that, it got real quiet.” He added that something had to be done about the cars lifting off the ground like that and that it shouldn’t have airborne with a head-on impact.
Jeff Gordon, vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports, empathized with Preece. However, he also stated his appreciation for NASCAR in improving the standards of safety on superspeedways.
