Ryan Preece
In the Northeast racing community, the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour is king. It is NASCAR’s oldest division and the only open-wheel series sanctioned by NASCAR. It has produced three NASCAR Hall of Famers – Richie Evans (Class of 2012), Jerry Cook (Class of 2016) and Mike Stefanik (Class of 2021).
As a 13-year-old, Ryan Preece was driving and winning in these low-slung, high-horsepower machines. By the time he turned 16, Preece was a Tour regular. In 2009, the Berlin, Connecticut-native finished second in the championship and earned another runner-up result in 2012. In between, Preece won the 2011 SK Modified track championship at Stafford (Conn.) Motor Speedway and the 2012 track championship at Thompson (Conn.) Speedway. Then in 2013, a 23-year-old Preece won the Modified Tour title by scoring four victories and racking up 10 top-five finishes to edge Doug Coby by 32 points.
With a championship in hand, Preece used it to earn new opportunities while continuing to tally wins on the Modified Tour and in other similarly styled cars. He won another Modified track championship at Thompson in 2014 and grabbed the 2015 New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedweeks Modified championship.
Preece made a smattering of starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series – the stepping-stone division to the elite NASCAR Cup Series – before landing a fulltime ride with JD Motorsports in 2016. With the small, underfunded team, Preece delivered a scrappy performance that delivered a season-best finish of 10th.
“That time opened my eyes to all the different factors that go into winning races at that level,” Preece said. “It’s such a team aspect from the car with aerodynamics to pit crews servicing the car during the race. It’s so much more than what I was used to on the Modified Tour. There, if my car was a little off or even sideways, I could just drive the hell out of it, go forward and pass cars. I could start 30th and it didn’t matter.
“In fact, what I was used to was starting outside the top-14. Back in the Northeast at local tracks, if you won the week before, they had a handicap system where you started 15th the next week. That’s what I was used to, so passing cars wasn’t a problem. But at the Xfinity and Cup Series levels, you quickly realize the importance of track position and pit crews.”
Preece persevered and persisted. He won two more New Smyrna Speedweeks Modified titles in 2016 and 2017 while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on achieving Xfinity Series success.
Preece put everything on the line to secure two races with Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) in 2017. In equipment finally befitting his talent, Preece finished second in his JGR debut at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon and then won in his next outing at Iowa Speedway in Newton. In his next five Xfinity Series starts, Preece never finished outside of the top-10, a run capped with a second victory in April 2018 at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
“There’s not always a clear path to get where you want to be,” Preece said. “Whether you make opportunities or get opportunities presented to you, you just have to go for it.”
His 19-race Xfinity Series slate with JGR earned Preece a fulltime Cup ride with JTG-Daugherty Racing. He debuted with the team in the 2019 Daytona 500 and finished a strong eighth. Despite some other impressive performances that netted eight additional top-10 results in a three-year stint with the team, Preece left unfulfilled.
While wins eluded Preece in Cup, he remained victorious in other series. He won three Modified Tour races in 2021 to bring his career win total to 25, and he collected Modified wins at other familiar tracks, namely Thompson, Stafford and South Boston (Va.) Speedway. Preece also made his NASCAR Truck Series debut, winning in his first career start on June 18, 2021 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway.
Preece bet on himself in 2022, eschewing opportunities with other teams to embed himself with Stewart-Haas Racing as the team’s reserve driver. He spent the year performing simulator work that benefitted the entire organization and ran a mix of races across each of NASCAR’s top-three national touring series – Cup, Xfinity and Truck. Preece punctuated the diverse schedule by winning his second straight Truck Series race on June 24 at Nashville.
The collective performance earned Preece another crack at the Cup Series, driving the No. 41 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing.
“I know what I can do in a racecar, and there’s nobody who’s harder on me than I am on myself,” Preece said. “It comes down to people and innovation and how to best use the resources available to us. It’s not going to be easy, but one thing my father always taught me is that nothing in life worth doing is ever easy.”
Preece’s father, Jeff, raced Late Model stock cars, and his grandfather, Bob Judkins, was a well-respected Modified car owner. That meant Preece was introduced to racing early on, going to races throughout New England to watch his dad compete. By age 7, Preece was the one competing, racing Quarter Midgets at tracks in Meriden and Thompson, Connecticut. Go-karts followed, then 600cc Micro Sprints, Mini Sprints and Winged Micro Sprints on asphalt.
It was at a Winged Micro Sprint race in 2002 at Mahoning Valley Speedway in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, where Preece was first tabbed to drive a Modified.
“A team owner came up to me when I was winning there in the Micro Sprint and put me in his Modified,” Preece said. “We went out for practice and we were fast, and this was a Tour-type Modified on a quarter-mile oval, so not superfast, but it’s still a 2,600-pound racecar with a 13-year-old driving it. At the time, that wasn’t really a thing.
“My father and I, we sold our Micro, bought a Modified turnkey for $10,000, and we ran lot of races wherever they would let me – down in North Carolina, Pennsylvania – but I couldn’t race in my home state because I wasn’t old enough. And then when I was about 15 years old, I started running the Race of Champions Tour and that’s really how my Modified career took off.”
Preece resides in Kannapolis, North Carolina, with his wife, Heather, and their daughter, Rebecca.
