Ryan Preece’s story is a rollercoaster of guts, grit, and gut-wrenching wrecks that’d make anyone’s heart skip. 2023’s Daytona Night Race—chaos strikes. His Stewart-Haas Racing Ford gets turned, and flips ten times in a bone-rattling barrel roll, camera blacking out as Heather, his wife, watches from home with their daughter Rebecca, breath held tight. Silence grips the stands; Heather’s world freezes.
Then, 2025 Daytona 500,—closing laps, different team, yet another draft disaster. Preece was collateral damage as Christopher Bell spun into the outside wall on the restart with 5 laps to go. The RFK Racing Ford took a hit and was flipped airborne by contact from Erik Jones’ No. 43 as he stayed airborne for a scarily long time. His car came spinning and tumbling down on the track, and everyone’s hearts stopped.
Preece’s wife was stuck watching the same horror show loop
Twice now, fate has flipped him at Daytona, and Heather’s confessing the chill still haunts her. Rebecca, their little girl, is the heartbeat behind every plea. Ryan felt the silence during his crash. “I got real quiet,” he recalls, mid-flip in 2025. “All I thought about was my daughter.” The most harrowing part of being airborne in a car is the uncertainty of what will happen next. You lose control of the car at that moment and all you can do is think of the people you love, and that’s exactly what Preece did. He added, “I knew what was going on—I didn’t where was gonna end up.”
In a segment on FOX with Jamie Little, Preece and his wife detailed their emotions through the crashes and how they have handled it as a family. “I couldn’t help but think it wouldn’t happen twice,” Heather said, voice quaking. “Everything flashed through my head—what life would look like if he were to be gone.” For Heather, those wrecks aren’t just stats—they’re nightmares replayed in slow-motion.
Everything went quiet, and he immediately thought about his daughter.@RyanPreece_ and his family look back on his terrifying Daytona 500 crash with @JamieLittleTV. pic.twitter.com/5WGgGppHJg
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) February 23, 2025
Rewind to their roots—Heather met Ryan Preece on the track, racing side-by-side. “He spends every free minute with Rebecca,” she beams. “Even though he’s so busy, he still does everything in his power to make me feel supported.” Life on the NASCAR grid full-time is a hectic world filled with unpredictable chaos. Despite all that, Preece still manages to devote time to his family. He opened up about how Rebecca changed his life, adding, “I’ve heard it all my life how kids are going to change you… It’s very easy to get lost in racing.”
Fatherhood flipped his lens. But those Daytona spins? They’re a brutal wake-up call. Yet Preece is unshaken. “I don’t go into the weekend thinking, ‘I’m gonna wreck—we’re gonna flip.’ I go like it didn’t happen—that’s how you have to be.” Despite his frequent tussles with near death, Preece takes a positive outlook to the track. They say it’s always the fear that gets you, and Ryan Preece embodies that motto.
“You have to just look at every race as a new race,” Heather says, steel in her tone. “I focus on hoping he has a successful day and is safe.” It’s a tightrope walk—cheering his fire while dreading the flames. However, Ryan is all in. “This is the way I provide for my family,” he declares. “It’s what I love to do. I put my heart and soul into this sport. This is the best way for me to give my family the best life that they could ever have.”
“We keep this picture in our laundry room,” she shares—a snapshot of survival from Preece’s 2023 crash. That one was particularly terrifying as it left Preece in the hospital with black eyes. However, he posted a picture walking out of the hospital with his daughter days later and since then their family has been incredibly grateful. Heather added, “I like to keep it as a reminder of just how blessed we are that he’s okay, how lucky we are.”
Two Daytona wrecks—2023’s ten-flip terror, 2025’s last-lap tumble—and Preece keeps climbing back in. “I’m willing to accept the risks,” he says, defiance blazing. Heather’s spine-chilling fears? They’re real, raw—every flip is a dagger. Yet love binds them tighter than any chassis. Racing is his pulse, family is his fuel—Rebecca’s giggles and Heather’s strength motivate him to go out there and be the best driver he can be. Yet, his crashes are not just bad luck, it is a wake-up call for the sport.
Ryan Preece’s Daytona horror proves it is time for change
Ryan Preece is the king of grit, but Daytona kept testing him. The 2025 Daytona 500 was cruising toward its climax when—bam!—the “Big One” struck with five laps left. Preece’s No. 60 Ford Mustang popped a wheelie, flipped like a wild stallion, and smashed the wall, leaving us gasping. “I don’t want to be the example,” he told Racing America’s Chris Childers. “I don’t want it to be me.”
This wasn’t just a tumble—Preece calls it worse than his 2023 ten-flip nightmare. “It was violent, really violent,” he says, eyes wide. “When the car left the ground, it got quiet—too quiet. I thought I was going over the fence.” Christopher Bell’s slip triggered it—Erik Jones slammed into Preece, and physics took the wheel. Midair, brakes mashed, he’s pleading, “You can have my ticket. I don’t want this. I want to get off.” That eerie hush as he soared? Pure terror, a racer’s nightmare in slow-motion.
Daytona’s a beast, and Preece’s crash is screaming for change. Superspeedways keep flipping cars like pancakes—2023’s barrel roll, now this wheelie-gone-wild. NASCAR’s package has fans buzzing and drivers bracing; airborne chaos is the new normal, and Preece ain’t here to be the poster boy for disaster. “When it gets somebody…”—that’s the chilling what-if hanging over every lap. Preece’s frustrations were also echoed by Denny Hamlin on his actions detrimental podcast.
The #11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver said, “Anytime your car comes down like flat like that on the bottom, it is a backbreaker. I would be coming in here in a wheelchair.” The immediate reaction of anyone would be to reduce the speed, but Hamlin was more concerned about the cars. He feels that reduced drag leading to increased tire wear would make drivers more cautious and calculated, which makes for great racing. “Please, please get drag out of these cars. Reduce spoiler size please. I just think that we have got to get drag out of these race cars. It will fix so many things,” he added.
Resilience defines Preece, but this wreck is a siren. With Denny Hamlin on his side, one can hope NASCAR makes the requisite changes to superspeedway racing so that we never have to see anyone flip that violently again.
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