Fifteen years ago, Ryan Preece had his first NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour win at Martinsville Speedway.
By Cara Cooper, The Martinsville Bulletin
Since then, Preece, of Berlin, CT, has moved up the racing ladder and is now driving in the NASCAR Cup Series, but on Thursday, in a return to his roots, he raced a modified at Martinsville Speedway again, and won another grandfather clock.
Preece led throughout the final green flag run to win Thursday’s Virginia Is For Racing Lovers 200 by nearly a full second over second place finisher Justin Bonsignore.
The win was emotional for Preece for many reasons.
“Most people, when you’re at the Cup level and you come down and you win, you probably wouldn’t see so much emotion, but I put a lot of effort into my racing,” Preece said after the race. “I looked at my wife three days ago and I said to her, man, the amount of details I put into my race car and the amount of time I put into it, I knew two or three weeks ago it was going to be a lot of work, bit I just put a lot into this.”
A late caution brought about a restart with about 20 laps to go. Preece started up front on the restart, and pulled further and further ahead as the laps dwindled down.
“When you have that fast of a race car and that dominant you just want to show it,” he said.
Patrick Emerling, Matt Hirschman, and Tyler Rypkema finished third, fourth, and fifth.
“It’s not easy to win, I don’t care what level it is, and especially these guys,” Preece said. “Justin Bonsignore, Ronnie Silk, there’s a lot of great racers on this series. It’s 200 laps, anything can happen. You’ve got to have flawless pit stops. You’ve got to do everything right coming through the pack.”
Andy Seuss, a former driver for Martinsville’s Riggs Racing who had members of the Riggs team working in his pits, ran as high as third early in the race, but an issue on pit road following caution at the midway point forced him to go a lap down, and he eventually left the race on lap 137 due to a failed clutch. He finished the day 27th.
Ron Silk came into Thursday’s season finale race needing to finish eighth or better to win the 2023 NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour championship.
Silk, a two-time Tour champion, finished the season with five wins and 15 top-5s in 18 races.
“It’s awesome. A lot of effort goes into it,” Silk said of the championship. “It’s been a long season. Kind of weird racing tonight knowing the scenario… I kind of tried to keep myself in a decent position most of the night. Got turned around once on the backstretch but luckily didn’t hit anything.
“Like I said, a lot of work goes into this… It’s really rewarding to get another one.”
The 40-year-old from Norwalk, Connecticut has been racing on the Modified Tour since 2003. Thursday was his 250th career start.