It would be easy for Ryan Preece to sit here at this stage of the summer and lament everything that went wrong in the first half of his debut season at Stewart-Haas Racing but is neither healthy nor productive.
Instead, the 32-year-old arrives at the track each week with the goal of making directionally positive gains under the conviction that everything else will take care of itself. Everything else, of course, includes an expiring contract and rampant speculation about what the No. 41 team could look like next season.
Industry expectation is that Preece will return, Stewart-Haas instead focusing on making their cars better, as opposed to an overall of its driver lineup beyond Josh Berry coming in to replace the retiring Kevin Harvick in the No. 4.
Preece is confident of that outcome too.
“I feel like it’s going to be fine,” Preece told Sportsnaut on Wednesday at North Wilkesboro Speedway during a NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour tire test. “I feel fine about it.
“You know, here’s the thing. I feel like I don’t put myself in bad positions. Those situations just seem to be finding me right now. So once everything turns around, and we can put it all together, we’ll be running closer to where we want to be. But as far as being locked in (to a formal extension), I feel like we’re close.”
To his point, Preece has continually found himself on the short end of crashes that were objectively not his fault. For example, at New Hampshire on Monday, Preece was running inside the Top-15 until Michael McDowell sent him into the wall and down pit road for repairs. He finished 26th with a car capable of finishing in the top-10.
Preece was running inside the top-10 at Atlanta the week before when he got tagged from behind by Ricky Stenhouse Jr. due to a stack-up that started ahead of them with Ryan Blaney. Preece spun directly into the path of Bubba Wallace and the caution ended the race due to an impending thunderstorm. He finished 24th with a car poised to finish inside the top-10.
Again.
That’s been the story of his entire season, leaving him 26th in points and needing to win over the next six weeks to make the Cup Series playoffs. When Preece finishes races clean, he is consistently around the top-15, but he also recognizes there is work to be done to get them closer to the front with regularity.
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“I mean, listen, I led a lot of laps at Martinsville,” Preece said. “We did really well at Los Angeles. We’ve had a few good days. Our superspeedway stuff, it’s been fun to be so aggressive on those tracks, but we just need to capitalize better on our good days.
“But sitting here and all of us talking about how frustrating it is, yeah it’s super frustrating but we just need to keep working so that we can start running top-5 and top-10 consistently. Sitting here and being frustrated and just expecting it to take care of itself isn’t how we’re going to get there.”
To that point, Preece just wishes, like everyone else in the garage, that there were more than 20 minutes of practice each weekend.
“Brad (Keselowski) talked about it this week,” Preece said. “I’ve complained about it too because that’s a tool that every driver has to work with to make his car and team better.
“They’ve taken it out of the hands of every young driver because we can only show up and make the most of what we’re given that day and that’s it. You guys (in the media, fans, etc.) read our names as statistics but there’s just so much more to it.
“So, I’m one of those guys that says give me practice and give me testing, give me the things those guys had 20 years ago, and I get what they’re trying to accomplish but times have changed with this car.”
For the time being, Preece and crew chief Chad Johnston are going to keep trying, putting it the work that could lead to a turnaround that manifests for the remainder of the season.
“There are chances every week,” Preece said. “I had a lot of high expectations, high hopes for New Hampshire and it didn’t work out. So Pocono is a new week. We could be really fast at Pocono and we can go to Watkins Glen, where road courses have been good to us, and we just need things to fall our way. So yeah, every week is a new opportunity as long as the driver and the crew communicates and puts in the work, which we are. …
“And if it doesn’t work out this week, what are you going to do? I can’t waive my magic wand and neither can Chad. We have what we have and we have to make the best of our days. I want to be P1 just like Chad does, just like everyone at SHR does, and we want to be 1-2-3-4 every week.
“We can only keep trying to tun on the things that we have, we’re making gains and we’re going to continue making gains.”