Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Martinsville Midweek Media Availability
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang Dark Horse for RFK Racing, is coming off back-to-back top-10 finishes in the NASCAR Cup Series, including a ninth-place run Sunday in Homestead. He comes into this weekend’s race at Martinsville Speedway 16th in the point standings and has his only career Cup pole at the Virginia short track. He answered questions from the media earlier today about his season and the upcoming race weekend.
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Fastenal Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON HAVING THE SAME TIRE AS NOVEMBER AT MARTINSVILLE AND HAVING JUST ONE OPTION AS OPPOSED TO TWO DIFFERENT SETS? “I think traditionally I agree with only having one tire. I think until recently most forms of motorsports has always just been one compound. For me, I’m OK with it and I also think the improvements that Goodyear has done and continues to do on the short track tire – you look at Martinsville. How many years has it been since we’ve had an outside that prevails on a restart? We don’t need a second option to do that. Now, from the strategy standpoint, if you have a tire that’s a little bit better and it can get you off cycle that can sometimes be interesting and nice, but you could also do the same things if you changed lengths or other things that create different strategies, rather than having a straight-up race of ‘hey, we need to pit now.’ So, I’m OK and I like the fact that we’re gonna bring a tire that in 90 or 100 laps that if you beat on it, you’re gonna pay the price. I think if we continue to go down that avenue and trying to keep getting even more and more aggressive, it’s only gonna be better and better.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR CHANCES THIS WEEKEND AND WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET? “I feel like our chances are good. I feel like over the past few years we’ve qualified really well at Martinsville, especially with this tire. I think it’s something that I’m looking forward to things that I could definitely do better and hopefully do those things on Sunday. So, yeah, I’m looking forward to it, just being my background of short track racing and I’ve had success at Martinsville – not in the Cup Series, but in modifieds and obviously this form of racing suits my style.”
HOW HAVE YOU FELT UNDER THE RFK BANNER SO FAR? “I’ve enjoyed my time, for sure. Something that I really reflect on is the fact that Chris and Brad have a lot of experience and mile and a halves have kind of been the Cryptonite side of things for me at least how I feel when I show up, so being able to lean on Brad and being able to lean on Chris for that, and obviously we’ve shown improvements there. Other than that, it’s been great. I’ve really enjoyed it and am continuing to grow and perform better. At the end of the day, racing is a performance sport. We want to win races. We want to be consistent. I think, right now, what makes me feel really good is outside of the first three races, we’ve made a lot of gains and we are building a strong foundation overall within the group, so hopefully we can keep pushing and pulling all together and really make us a powerhouse.”
YOU WERE HAPPY WITH THE SPEED YOU HAD AT DAYTONA. “You take away the finish of Daytona and even COTA, to be honest with you. I thought we were gonna finish top 10 there. We’ve shown some really good signs, so it’s very promising.”
HOW DOES THE MOMENTUM YOU HAVE CHANGE THE ATTITUDE YOU COME INTO MARTINSVILLE WITH? “For me, what I’ve liked about it is we’ve been aggressive – aggressive on pit calls, aggressive on the track, aggressive everything and that’s what I want to keep going for our group. As far as the momentum side, momentum is great to have. It’s great to have because when you look at the metric for qualifying, and I think of Martinsville, I think of a track that the later you go, the better off it’s gonna be historically. So the fact that we’re one of the last 10 cars gives us a great opportunity to have a great start to the race, so that makes me feel pretty good. But, I also understand that every week this is a grind. This is a grind of continuing that momentum, so we’re still a new team. We’re still a group that it’s a brand new group and we are still finding our way. As far as short tracks go, we ran Bowman Gray and we made the race and finished 11th, but I feel really comfortable with it and we’re gonna hopefully unload with some really good speed and be able to keep building the short track notebook that we all want to have, so I think that’s where, for myself, I want to keep it all in perspective. I do feel like if we unload with a bunch of speed, yeah, we can go win that race. But at the very least, you’ve got to manage expectations. My goal for the first third of this season is if you have the opportunity to win the race, you need to go win that race. If you don’t, we need to consistently be doing what we’re doing, which is being there in the top 12 and executing our days to have better days. I felt like at Homestead we qualified not very well and drove our way up into the top 12 and then we managed ourselves to get a ninth. Those are the things we need to do as a group right now and then just keep building that notebook.”
HAVE YOU TALKED TO JOSH BERRY SINCE HIS WIN, AND HOW MUCH MORE DOES IT ADD PRESSURE ON YOU TO GET INTO VICTORY LANE? “I don’t think it adds pressure. I did talk to Josh and I congratulated him and I was really happy for him. I think the situation was right there, just like I said a second ago, is when you have those opportunities and you have that speed, you need to capitalize on it, and I think Josh did a great job with it. When he had an opportunity on the front row, he didn’t let that opportunity slip away. When that opportunity is there, you need to grab it and that’s really hopefully the more consistent we run where we are, we’ll have those opportunities to go do that. So, I’m feeling pretty – I don’t want to say I’m 100 percent of where I am, but I couldn’t have asked more as far as how the first three races resulted versus how we turned it around at Phoenix and had an opportunity to, I felt like, win that race by saving the option set and having that lead. I felt like that just kind of put the little bit of life that we needed at the point we needed it and we’ve carried it since, so all eyes are on Martinsville now.”
YOU CALLED YOUR PIT CREW GANGSTERS WITH HOW FAST THEY WERE LAST WEEK AT HOMESTEAD. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT GROUP? “When I say gangsters that’s just something I say, but they’re bad ass. I’m proud of them because I’m here every Wednesday and I enjoy doing pit practice with those guys. For me, I just do it as like a camaraderie, team building thing, and I know the level of effort and what I put into my racing, and what I enjoy is seeing the grind that those guys have, the want to win and the will to win. We’re gonna have our moments, don’t get me wrong. Nobody is perfect, so they’re gonna have a day or a time that it might be a struggle, but I’m gonna support them whether they’re having good times or bad times. I want to praise them when they’re doing days like they did at Homestead. As far as the team, the pit crew side and knowing they were gonna be good, that’s not me. I feel like Brad and Jack and RFK, the Fenway Group, everybody here has done a phenomenal job in giving me every great opportunity I can have, so I’m really appreciative for the group that we have right now and the things that we’re building on.”
DARLINGTON IS TWO WEEKS AWAY. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT RACE WEEKEND COMING UP? “I say this to my father, I say this to a lot of people that know me, I live day to day and a week at a time, so as far as Darlington goes, I haven’t even started really analyzing or looking at it, other than the fact that I know Chris was super fast and Brad was super fast and they won, so I feel good about all the things that they’ve done as an organization and I feel like our group is gonna be able to really heavily lean on both of those. When Monday comes, I’ll be all eyes on it, but Darlington is a place that I’ve always enjoyed racing and I felt like we, I can’t even remember where we ended up. I think we ended up ninth or 10th in the fall race, but somewhere around there. I might be completely off, but I felt like we ran pretty well and that makes me excited going into next weekend.”
A COUPLE WEEKS AGO YOU SAID YOU SAW A WILL TO WIN ON THIS TEAM. HAS THE CONFIDENCE AND ATTITUDE BEEN SHIFTING THE LAST COUPLE WEEKS WITH HOW WELL YOU’VE BEEN RUNNING? “I think Derrick has done a great job of managing the group because this is a new group. There are a few guys that have been around for a long time within the road crew, but as far as experience and completely new guys, there is a wide variety, so I think for Derrick, which I’ll give him a lot of credit for, is teaching and instilling this mindset in guys that haven’t ever had the opportunity to race for wins and telling them to expect to try and win every given Sunday. I have that mindset. I’ve had that mindset my entire life because that’s all I’ve done other than in the Cup Series there have been some struggles, but anything outside of that, you show up to the racetrack expecting to win, so I think the mindset of expect to win and run well is a mindset that Derrick is trying to instill in this group and I’ll give him a lot of credit because the attitude of RFK in general is the push for perfection, so that’s what we’re doing. There’s just a lot of will to win and that’s the thing, it’s kind of like my racing career. I could have gave up chasing after this dream back in 2014, but there’s a piece inside of you that’s just gonna keep pushing and pushing and pushing and be relentless, and that’s this group.”
HAVE YOU LEARNED THINGS ABOUT YOUR PERFORMANCE AT RFK THAT YOU DIDN’T NECESSARILY FOCUS ON BEFORE? “Yeah, I would say there’s been some moments and some sitdowns of talking about, I think that’s really what I referenced to about areas we’re focusing on and that’s been something that I’ve been diving deep into and certainly I think it’s paying dividends, so I’m really thankful for my time here and the things that I’m learning and continuing to push to be better.”
HAS THE NEXT GEN CAR IN ANY WAY FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED THE RACE CRAFT OF HALF-MILE SHORT TRACK RACING AT ALL? “I think it’s gotten closer, in my opinion. I know there’s some louder voices that talked about the Next Gen car and the aero and inefficiencies or some of those things, but what I truly believe is the fact that Goodyear has really been working hard on softening this tire and wearing this tire. When I watched the Martinsville race in October, when I rewatched it this week, I said it before of how many times with the old car did the outside prevail over the bottom car? Not very often because the inside was such an advantage with some of the things that you were dealing with with the other deal, and it could be frustrating. Where, if you’re a different series, I mean, you always felt like there was an opportunity, so I feel like our short track product is only gonna continue to get better, especially after what I felt like we saw with Martinsville in the fall and really the trajectory that I feel like we’re trying to go into for Richmond and all those things will pay off if we can continue that for a place like New Hampshire or Wilkesboro and continue on, but those type of things don’t happen overnight. I feel like the fact that we’re trying to make changes, and they’re positive changes, it’s all really good stuff and it’s only gonna pay dividends to the race fans because, and this is my opinion, I don’t think going to a smaller tire is going to make a difference. I think that you’re always gonna have your challenges, so I’m always a fan of more horsepower no matter what because it just gives me more opportunity for whether making good decisions or doing something right or even making mistakes. You want to be able to capitalize on when people make mistakes, so I hope that kind of answers your question. I kind of got long-winded there, but I’m a fan of the direction we’re going. One other thing I wanted to bring up, we talk about aero stuff all the time and short track stuff, but you go to a Pensacola in a super late model, aero is a thing. It’s a thing no matter what. Whether I race a modified, a super late model, it doesn’t matter. You’re going fricking fast and it is what it is, so it’s not only us in the Cup Series or Xfinity Series or Trucks or whatever that we see it, we just have really, really smart people in our garage that know how to maximize.”
GOODYEAR SAYS WE’RE APPROACHING A POINT WHERE THIS IS AS FAR AS WE CAN GO, BUT THEY’VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR A WHILE AND THEY SEEM TO GET FURTHER. CAN WE GET FULLY TO WHERE XFINITY IS RIGHT NOW PURELY THROUGH THE TIRE? “I don’t even think the Xfinity Series racing at Martinsville is that great, I just see guys knocking each other out of the way. That’s it. I don’t think that’s racing. I can go to a local go kart track and knock a guy out of the way and do the same damn thing. I find that the Next Gen car if you smash a guy, you can’t stick your nose under the guy like you can in those cars, but as far as what you were talking about with Goodyear saying that we’re getting to a point and maybe we are, but at the same time in the early 2000’s when we had right height rules and guys started to figure out coil binding and how to put the car on the ground and have an aero advantage once you go on the racetrack, those are all things that we thought weren’t possible until we figure out that they are, so that’s the thing about racing. It’s constant innovation and progression and figuring out things that you didn’t think were possible, so that’s the exciting thing that we have to look forward to in our sport.”
WHAT IS IT LIKE NOW WHEN YOU HAVE SO MANY DIFFERENT PRIMARY SPONSORS IN TERMS OF TIME CONSTRAINTS AND WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU? “Well, that’s part of my job. I think of what I tell people all the time is for those that don’t know, my father has a small family business in Connecticut. I think there are 10 employees there and they’re plumbers and HVAC, and as I was growing up in the summer I used to do a summer job either being a tin knocker making duct work, or in the winter we’d go on rooftops. I tell you what, going and doing sponsorship events and things of that nature are a hell of a lot better than sweating in an attic or freezing on a roof. So, I guess, to put it in perspective that’s part of my job. The racing part on Sunday and the prep work and all that, that’s just all part of the job description. It’s not a 40-hour week. My family and my wife support me and they understand that there are a lot of commitments to this and obviously a lot of benefits, so I deal with it fine because I’m the type of person that even when I was racing in Connecticut, my life revolved around racing. There was no such thing as, ‘well, I only want to spend two hours here because I want to go home.’ It was, ‘I’m gonna do whatever it takes to win,’ and part of winning is having great partners and that’s part of it. To me, it’s no different than normal. It’s just doing something a little different.”
HAVE YOU SEEN IT SHIFT DURING YOUR TIME IN NASCAR BECAUSE TEAMS HAVE SO MANY PRIMARY SPONSORS AND MORE DEMAND ON YOUR TIME? “I feel like maybe for guys that were 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, but, for me, no. I’ve always felt like I’m always doing something, so it’s no different for me.”
