RFK Racing's Ryan Preece is in a difficult position on Saturday night. He's starting from pole position for just the second time in his entire career with a legitimate shot of contending for the race win, but he has to pay close attention to gathering stage points for the battle around the playoff cut-line.
Preece has 211 starts in the Cup Series with zero race wins. He also enters this race 34 points outside of the playoffs with just two races left in the regular season. A victory would be a dream come true for the driver of the No. 60 and would solve all of his problems, but without a race win, maximizing points will be crucial over the course of 400 laps at Richmond Raceway.
The importance of stage points
“For me, it’s a great opportunity to go win the stage and get 10 points," said Preece in a Friday press conference. "As much as I hate talking about points, especially racing against my teammate [Chris Buescher], I think he’s starting (12th), so this is an opportunity to try and close back in on some of those points he put on us, but as well as an opportunity for us to execute tomorrow.
“There’s no better place than starting on the pole and with stage one being 70 laps, I don’t think you’re gonna have anybody pitting in that stage because there’s no way you can make it up. So my hope is that we don’t have any cautions and we run 70 straight laps. We can win that stage and then from there it’s everybody whoever came up with the best strategy and takes care of their tires best seems like that’s what it’s gonna be.”
And if he were to capture the checkered flag, Preece would have no qualms about climbing on top of the car (even after Zilisch's Victory Lane fall) to celebrate.
“I’d climb up on top and I potentially might even do a backflip, but I don’t think the backflip would go very well, but, I think I’ll still climb up," joked Preece.
But being overly worried about stacking stage points could come back to bite any driver, as a new winner from below Preece in the standings would blow up the bubble battle and make it all for nothing.
“I think we’re at two racetracks, superspeedway, especially Daytona, anything can happen," admitted Preece. "We saw that last year. At Richmond, you don’t know who is gonna show up with the right package today for this option tire. We all, as you guys have already heard, how is the tire wear going to be. How impactful can that play into this race? I think there’s a lot of thoughts. Yeah, you’re gonna have to win to get in to really lock yourself in, unless you’re Tyler Reddick. I think Chris and I are both trying to figure out what’s the best strategy for us. I know Scott [Graves, #17 crew chief] and Derrick [Finley, #60 crew chief] are working hard on that. I have really fast race cars and go execute great races. If you’re in a position for a green-white-checkered and you have an opportunity to win, when it comes Monday don’t think about what I should have done different.”
Still a team effort despite teammate battle
Despite it being RFK vs. RFK for the final spot, the No. 17 and No. 60 team are still working hard to lift each other up. There is no change in the team atmosphere as the tension builds towards the cutoff race next weekend.
“I would agree with what Chris [Buescher] said last week because I actually watched his media availability, which is that nobody is hiding anything from anybody," said Preece. "That’s the truth. I was talking about the blacktop here today in turns one and two. I don’t think a lot of us really knew about it, and I didn’t even know about it until I went out in modified practice yesterday and noticed it, so I just communicated some of the thoughts I had on that. Scott, Jeremy, Derrick, they work really well together just like all of us drivers do, so I think the environment that we have at RFK right now is a really good one and I don’t hide anything from them, they don’t hide anything from me and that’s what’s nice about being there.”
