Riding along with Ryan Preece on his No. 41 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) is HaasTooling.com, the cutting tool division of Haas Automation led by team co-owner Gene Haas. HaasTooling.com was launched as a way for CNC machinists to purchase high-quality cutting tools at great prices.
Haas cutting tools are sold exclusively online at HaasTooling.com and shipped directly to end users. HaasTooling.com
The 65th running of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 19 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway will be Preece’s fourth career start in The Great American Race. His first Daytona 500 was in February 2019. He started 21st and finished eighth in a race that had 12 cautions for 47 laps.
This will be Preece’s seventh overall start on the 2.5-mile superspeedway. Most recently, his best finish at the track of fourth came in August 2021. He started 24th and finished fourth, tallying his first top-five finish at the track.
Perseverance has paid off for Preece. The 32-year-old racer from Berlin, Connecticut, was promoted by SHR to his role as fulltime driver of the No. 41 Mustang in the Cup Series after serving as a reserve driver with the organization in 2022. He spent last season performing simulator work while running a mix of races across each of NASCAR’s top three national touring series – two in the Cup Series, three in the Xfinity Series, and 10 in the Truck Series. His season was punctuated by a Truck Series win from the pole on June 24 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway, his second straight win at the 1.333-mile oval east of Music City.
In the first of his three Cup Series outings last year with Rick Ware Racing, Preece punched his ticket into the main event of the non-points Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum to kick off the season. He had to race his way in and did so in one of the Last Chance Qualifier races after working closely with the team to wrench on the car himself. He also ran at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway, where he finished 25th, and at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway, where he finished 37th.
In his three Xfinity Series starts last season, Preece had a best finish of fifth at Charlotte.
In addition to his Truck Series victory at Nashville last June, Preece collected six top-fives and eight top-10s in his nine other starts. He led 125 laps in all last year.
Preece made a name for himself on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour – NASCAR’s oldest division and the only open-wheel series sanctioned by NASCAR. Preece won the Tour championship in 2013 and worked hard to leverage that title into additional opportunities in the Xfinity Series – NASCAR’s stepping-stone division to the elite Cup Series. After spending all of 2016 in a scrappy effort with an underfunded team that delivered a best finish of 10th, Preece mortgaged his house 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, then won in his second start at Iowa Speedway in Newton. In his next five Xfinity Series starts, Preece never finished outside the top-10, a run capped with his April 2018 victory at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
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