It wouldn’t be the Daytona 500 without “The Big One.” Sunday’s NASCAR season kick-off was down to the final five laps when chaos broke out, collecting a whole slew of drivers with Ryan Preece getting the worst of it. It’s the second time in three years that Preece has suffered a serious crash in which his car goes airborne at Daytona, which has him and others across the sport wondering about the car’s ability to stay planted during a big, fast crash.
“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,” Preece said, according to Racer.com.
As you can deduct from Preece’s comment above (and the video below), the No. 60 Ford Mustang went for a long flight when he hit the front of Christopher Bell’s car after he had nowhere to go. Things developed with such ferocity that the car pulled a sustained wheelie—or at least that’s how it looked on TV. In reality, the car was flying through the air with its hood sticking up and its rear bumper hovering over the tarmac.
At that point, it was just a matter of time until the car came crashing back down or flipped completely over. It was the latter—though luckily, the flip was more sideways than end over end. Not that it was much consolation to Preece, who found himself sliding on the roof of his car at ridiculous speed heading toward the wall.
“When the car took off like that and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter,” Preece recounted. “I’m lucky to walk away but we’re getting really close to somebody not being able to.”
The Next Gen car’s ability to stay on the ground during these types of crashes has been questioned almost since its debut. Some mandatory changes have been implemented following previous incidents, but judging by Preece’s plywood comment, it clearly hasn’t been enough. If anyone knows firsthand, it’d be him.
#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/kMZcmSjgWP
— Ryan Preece (@RyanPreece_) February 17, 2025
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