You never, ever mess with the boss or make him look bad. NASCAR Cup driver Ryan Preece more or less lived up to that old adage in this past Sunday’s race at Iowa Speedway.
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Preece and his boss, RFK Racing co-owner Brad Keselowski, enjoyed one of the best finishes the team has had in quite a while, with Keselowski finishing third and Preece fifth. However, Preece admits he kind of laid back from challenging Keselowski even harder in the closing stages of the race. After all, he didn’t want to tick off the guy who signs his paychecks, right?
“Well, I don’t think it would have been the smart decision, considering he’s not only my teammate but he’s also part of the owner group,” Preece admitted when asked if it was gut-wrenching to let Keselowski have third place instead of himself.
“I didn’t necessarily let him go, I just didn’t fight him as hard as I could have. At that point in time, they had won two stages, had a really fast car and I didn’t want to be the reason in our Monday morning meeting, if I held him up for 15 laps and he happened to run down them guys and have a shot at winning if he had five more laps. I didn’t want to have that conversation.
“From the teammate perspective, I would hope it would be the same and I feel like it definitely would. There was a point early in the race that I think he could have forced the issue and potentially put me a lap down, but I was racing my ass off to stay on the lead lap and that was part of what kept us there.”
Preece was wise to let his boss go by and take third place, Keselowski’s second-best finish this season. As it stands now, with three races left in the regular season, RFK teammate Chris Buescher is 11th in the standings, Preece is 13th and Keselowski is 19th.
But the standings aren’t exactly precise
However, if you go by wins and playoff eligibility, only Buescher and Preece are playoff eligible, for now.
Even though they rank below Buescher and Preece in points, if Austin Cindric, Josh Berry and Shane van Gisbergen are counted because they all have at least one win, they would suddenly rank higher than Buescher and Preece. In that situation, Buescher would be 14th and Preece 16th.
And then Keselowski would be stuck in 22nd. The only way the former Cup champ will make the playoffs is to win one of the last three remaining regular season races: this Sunday at Watkins Glen (has never won there), next Saturday at Richmond (has two career wins there) and the regular season finale at Daytona (one career win).
