Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
South Point 400 Media Availability
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 60 Crumbl/Sysco Ford Mustang Dark Horse for RFK Racing, is coming off a sixth-place finish in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race on the Charlotte ROVAL. That marked his 11th top-10 finish in 2025, which is a single-season high for the Connecticut native. He participated in this week’s Ford media call and talked about last weekend and his hopes for the remaining four races.
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Crumbl/Sysco Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU HAVE A LOT OF GOOD THINGS HAPPENING LATE IN THE SEASON. A NEW SPONSOR THIS WEEKEND AMONG THEM. “Honestly, the ROVAL was a nice way to kind of get back on track. I felt like there were definitely some runs in August and September that had a lot of potential, it just kind of seemed like we hit a rut and weren’t able to capitalize on some of the days we were having. The ROVAL seemed like it got us out of that slump, so heading to Las Vegas, having Crumbl Cookie and Sysco on the car is exciting for us. It’s a new partner for RFK and then going to Talladega and Martinsville and Phoenix, these next four races are all places that I enjoy going to. We’ve had some good results and a place that we’re going for a second time, so we can still try to capitalize and win before the season is over.”
THE NEXT INTERMEDIATE TRACK AFTER THIS ONE IS VEGAS AGAIN IN MARCH. HOW MUCH IS THIS WEEKEND ABOUT THIS WEEKEND AND IS THERE ANYTHING YOU MIGHT DO TO LOOK AHEAD TO NEXT YEAR? “That’s a great way of looking at it. For us, I feel like the mile-and-a-halves have been just progress and something I’ve grown more and more comfortable with, and really just leaning on Brad and Chris. Going to Las Vegas, where we had a solid run earlier this year, it’s kind of like a benchmark of, ‘hey, what can we do to continue to make progress and contend for a win.’ We had a strong qualifying effort and worked on the car throughout the day, so I feel like this is a place that we could definitely see progress. I feel a lot more comfortable in the cars and that makes me feel very optimistic going into it. The goal is still to win. Even though we’re not in the playoffs and RFK is not in the playoffs, that’s the goal for all three of our teams, so that’s the plan.”
HOW MUCH ARE YOU ABLE TO PAY ATTENTION TO THOSE IN THE PLAYOFFS OR THOSE YOU DON’T WANT TO ADVANCE IN THE PLAYOFFS? “I think that’s challenging. Every situation is different and at the end of the day we’re still racing for our team and the seasons that we still have going on. I didn’t make the playoff format. In other forms of sports, when you’re not in the playoffs, you’re not playing. Well, we’re still playing. We’re still a part of these races, so from a bigger picture standpoint within the Ford group, Joey and Ryan Blaney, we want the best for them. We want them to go to Phoenix and go get Ford another title, but, at the same time, going to Las Vegas, Talladega, Martinsville and Phoenix, we need to go capitalize for Jack, for the Fenway Group, for Brad and put ourselves in contention to win. If I just chose to ride around in 15th or 10th or whatever and not try to win the race, I wouldn’t be doing myself justice, my family justice or the team justice. Every situation is different, but I didn’t make this format, and I still have to race for my team.”
HOW DO YOU LEARN WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO AND NOT OVERWHELM YOU? “I think every situation is different and how you approach that, you can’t sit here and say that right now because you don’t know what it’s gonna be. You don’t know the situation you’re gonna be in or not be in, so with that being said, it’s really difficult to say what you’re going to do in the moment because as a race car driver your number one focus is to win. That is our job, and how I approach a weekend from a racing perspective as a race car driver is to win and you adjust your goals accordingly throughout that event. For me, I feel more prepared going into this Las Vegas race than I did earlier this season, so I’m looking forward to that.”
ARE YOU CLEAR WHAT THE RULES ARE ON WHAT YOU ARE ALLOWED TO DO, OR IS IT A CASE WHERE EVERY SITUATION IS DIFFERENT? “I’m not gonna wreck Joey Logano or Ryan Blaney or anybody to win, but if I’m leading at the end of that race, I don’t know. What am I gonna do, give up a win? So, at the end of the day if any competitor is faster than me and they’re able to beat me without me rolling over, then good for them. They won, but I’m not gonna lift.”
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET AROUND MARTINSVILLE AND TO HIT YOUR MARKS CONSISTENTLY? “Martinsville is a place that I’ve definitely been comfortable at, whether it was a modified or a Cup car, it’s been a place that we’ve had speed. I’m just comfortable. As far as what it takes to be fast around there, I feel like that’s something that you learn when you’re short track racing in your style when it comes to the shorter type of race track. For me, Martinsville just fits that style. It fits what I grew up racing, which even though it’s a half-mile racetrack, I’m used to racing on quarter-mile bullrings, so anything you can do to be fast at those places translates to Martinsville.”
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH HOW YOUR TEAM HAS PROGRESSED SINCE THE START OF THE SEASON? “I’ll be honest with you, I think it shocked a lot of people for a first-year team that has never been together or been at RFK as an organization, so I feel like we’ve executed and done a good job on being consistent and making progress outside of winning. A win would have locked us into the playoffs, but if you take away winning and you’re in, I see some things. I think we’d be like 12th or whatever in points and that’s not something to be upset with. I think that’s a solid foundation towards hopefully a really, really strong contending season next year. At the end of the day, all I can do is control the things that I can control. For me, I feel like we’ve made a lot of progress and we continue to make progress and even in moments of adversity we find a way to execute, so I see a really high ceiling on all fronts and that makes me feel really optimistic and excited about 2026.”
YOU HAVE DONE A LOT OF NEAT VIDEOS WITH YOUR SPONSORS. WHAT IS IT LIKE DOING THOSE BECAUSE IT ALLOWS US TO SEE YOUR PERSONALITY? “To be honest with you, I like all of the Kroger partners that we’ve had. Between Minute Rice, Cookie Crumbl, the pizza rolls last week, the list goes on and on. I would say RFK and Kroger have just given me the outlet for you guys to see it. Sometimes I guess it’s not up to me for TV or what-not to come over and ask questions are really just kind of show those things, so RFK I feel like has done a great job showing it because that’s how I am naturally. In moments when you need to be serious, I’m serious, but, at the same time, I feel like we have a great relationship at RFK between Chris, Brad and myself and it makes those things easy.”
WHAT HAS THIS YEAR MEANT TO YOU IN TERMS OF GROWTH AND HOW FUN HAS IT BEEN TO SHOW YOUR PERSONALITY OFF THE TRACK? “For me, perspective is everything. Coming from New England, coming from modifieds and the background that I come from, there have been different points in my career. There was Ryan Preece the race car driver. Then there was Ryan Preece that had to be a mechanic as well as a race car driver and have to take on a lot of different roles. Sometimes you need to simplify things and just focus on what your job is, so, for me, it was really tough to separate the guy who built race cars and was trying to understand the setup and why it wasn’t doing what it needed it to do, instead of just worrying about, ‘hey, this is what I need,’ or ‘this is what I need to turn better,’ or ‘I need to be tighter,’ or whatever it may be. So, I feel like coming over to RFK, a lot of conversations with my wife and great conversations with Brad as well as the relationship I already had with Chris, it was easy to just have honest conversations or at least listening and taking it from a different vantage point and how I needed to adjust myself. I feel like I had a lot of growth this year and that’s been nice.”
WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM BRAD THIS YEAR? “Honestly, it would be really tough to put into words on just a Zoom call about how much I’ve really enjoyed working with Brad because I didn’t even realize some of the stories that I’ve learned along the way about him and his career and how many similarities there really are between his career and mine, so just how you have to work hard to get here. For me, that’s been really nice and seeing perspective and how I’ve looked at things and how he looks at things and areas to keep making better, so that’s been nice. My job moving forward is I want to win. Even though at the Cup Series level I haven’t won, I’ve won in everything I’ve ever been in and it’s something that I’m not OK, like even though we finished sixth at the ROVAL I find it difficult when people are like, ‘Oh yeah, we finished sixth,’ and they’re happy that week. Now, I’ve had five years of a challenging Cup career, so I find success in that, but I still as a race car driver and as a competitor I’m not OK with it because I want to win. There’s a burning desire to succeed and win and I feel like between these next four races as well as going through next season we’re gonna go do that, and I won’t stop until we do.”
WHERE HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST PROGRESS FOR YOU? “There are a few types of tracks that I would like to continue to build on, ones that I feel like I’ve had success with in the past. I think that’s the nice part about working with Brad as a car owner as well as a driver is he’s feeling the same things I’m feeling. It’s not like you’re talking about things in a meeting afterwards and you’re trying to decipher, ‘is he really feeling this or is it somewhere else?’ Typically, the conversations that Chris, Brad and myself are having is all things that are very similar and how can we make them better. I guess answering the previous question as well is we can streamline that process and that’s been nice.”
WHAT FACTORED INTO SUCH IMPROVEMENT IN THE SPRING LAS VEGAS RACE? “I think it was an execution of a lot of different things. The speed in the car. Good restart choices. Executing the race is ultimately what got us that third-place finish. I think between pit strategy, I remember there were two guys racing really hard at the end of that race taking air off each other that made us go from a fifth-place finish to a third-place finish and allowed us to capitalize on that, so that was just a group team effort between the car, Derrick’s great calls, the pit crew executing on pit road, and I felt like I did a good job on restarts. I felt like that was where we saw a lot of potential and built momentum for us. I think a lot of different things on that.”
APART FROM RUNNING A SMART RACE WHAT WILL TRANSLATE FROM THE SPRING TO THIS WEEKEND? “The last time I checked the weather it’s supposed to be in the mid-seventies, so it’s probably a relatively cool race for Las Vegas. It’s hard to say. From what I understand, it’s gonna be the Kansas tire. Kansas had a good amount of wear. As far as how you choose to manage those tires at a mile-and-a-half I’m not entirely sure yet. I felt like I did a pretty good job managing our tires at the ROVAL and taking care of them and understanding the situation after practice, so I don’t necessarily have a game plan set in stone because I feel like you need to see how practice and qualifying goes and then look through information and based off of feel make the best decisions on race day. It’s hard to say just yet, but I feel like we’re one step ahead of where we were when we went in March because this is a track that I felt like we had a lot of potential and hopefully we can go execute, we can do all of the things that we need to do and maybe win.”
WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE VEGAS TRACK? WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART? “To me, Las Vegas is definitely what you just said, it’s one of the faster paced mile-and-a-halves, like true mile-and-a-halves. It has a lot of character. One and two has bumps, which can be pretty sketchy, but there’s multiple ways to make speed, so, for me, that’s what makes it really interesting about it. It’s kind of not the same as the old Atlanta, but there’s a lot of technique to getting around turns three and four and going where people don’t and trying to maximize that, so I think Las Vegas is definitely a place when we as drivers go to a mile-and-a-half, that’s one of the favorites.”
WAS THERE ANYTHING YOU COULD HAVE DONE BETTER IN THE SPRING THAT MIGHT MAKE A DIFFERENCE THIS WEEKEND? “Yeah, I mean there are always things that I feel we can look back on and possibly do better. For me, it’s just continuing to zone in on the style that I want to be better at a mile-and-a-half, so I think we’ve made some gains and we’ll see this weekend.”
