Ryan Preece has progressed up the racing ladder and now tackles an opportunity to run for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year in 2019.
Preece joins JTG Daugherty Racing for the coming season after a year that saw the talented young driver win his second career Xfinity Series race while a member of Joe Gibbs Racing. He now gets a crack at NASCAR’s top series and will do so with a first start in the Daytona 500 next month.
After toiling in the short track world and putting together a successful effort in the Whelen Modified Tour where he won the 2013 championship, Preece is not taking his opportunity to compete in the Cup Series lightly.
“I think I’m pretty biased when it comes to things like this, but I think the way I came up was the way,” Preece said of his ascension up the racing ladder. “I mean it prepares you. I’ve been working and learning race cars and then winning. Learning to be a winner. I wouldn’t want to come up any other way. It’s gotten me, what I feel, prepared for where I am now to be ready for those restarts, be ready for situations that I’ve been in.”
He’ll team up with JTG holdover Chris Buescher in an otherwise revamped team that now includes an alliance with Hendrick Motorsports. Although Buescher is a former Xfinity Series champion and will start his third full year of Cup racing in 2019, Preece is three years older than his new teammate at 28.
“It’s so funny, Chris is a veteran, he has been doing this for quite a while, but I think I’m three years older than him,” Preece said. “It’s taken me a little longer to get here, but Chris and I get along really well.
“He is a racer just like I am. He has had a different road than I have and I respect him coming to race with him. I think we are going to work really well and we can bounce ideas off each other. I feel like he thinks about things about a race car like I do. Once we get going in the season, we can really start making some gains.”
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Despite the focus Preece will need to have in order to be successful at the highest level of the sport, short track racing remains in his DNA. Even as a Cup regular he doesn’t plan on leaving that part of his life too far behind.
“I was just unloading my modified this morning at a shop,” Preece said. “Absolutely. I’m going to be a New Smyrna, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, for the modified’s kicking off. I plan on the weekend we have off in April at Bowman Gray the 200-lapper, I plan on racing there.
“There are two tour shows that I have circled on my calendar. A mid-week show at Thompson that we are going to try and do some promoting for and obviously, New Hampshire Motor Speedway, I’m there already. That is a pretty big place for me. And then from there on it will just kind of be fill-in stuff. If it works out it can work out, if not, it doesn’t. I’m from the grassroots of racing and I don’t plan on leaving it very much.”
