34-year-old Ryan Preece was caught in a horrific wreck during the closing laps of the 2025 Daytona 500. His car went airborne and flipped before coming to a rest on its wheels after being hit by Christopher Bell. Fortunately, Preece did not suffer any significant health issues. However, he attacked NASCAR for how the car went up in the air and is still doing so.
Advertisement
Coming out of the infield medical care center on February 16, he’d said that the promotion needs to find a way to keep the cars on the ground during such accidents and added, “I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what 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.”
Since then, the likes of Jeff Gordon and Austin Cindric have spoken to the press and backed NASCAR for the significant safety improvements that have been made in recent years. Following their voices, Preece has stood solid in his opinion. In a recent episode of Backstretch Banter, the driver made his thoughts clear.
He said, “I’ll run through this and say, you know, we’ve definitely made the cars safer than what it was when Rusty Wallace, Dale Earnhardt, and Mark Martin… you know, the generations of those guys when they were racing. But one thing I’d like to continue to work on because we’ve been so proactive as a sport is figuring out a way to keep them on the ground.”
What Jeff Gordon and Austin Cindric said about Preece’s accident
While Gordon was empathetic towards Preece and admitted that more work needs to be done to keep the cars on the ground, he also lauded NASCAR for the significant improvements in driver safety thus far. He stressed that the promotion is always looking at such incidents and working on solutions to prevent them.
Cindric, on the other hand, believes that it is normal for a fast-moving car to raise its nose when side-by-side contact is made. Once the nose is up, the air gets underneath and lifts the car further. He declared that, while Preece might not agree, it was the contact that lifted the car and not bad aerodynamics.
Regardless of what the reason was, cars flying through the air is a scary sight and presents a big safety hazard. Preece has walked out of such a situation twice. But not everyone might be as lucky. While the improvements that have been made so far are praiseworthy, they aren’t an excuse to slow down further progress.
