Ryan Preece celebrates victory last year the New London-Waterford Speedbowl with his Ed Partridge owned Whelen Modified Tour team (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
Locals in the know can forgive Ryan Preece for not being totally up to speed with the comings and goings currently in Modified racing circles.
The Berlin driver is in the midst of his first season competing full-time in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, one step below the Sprint Cup Series.
But when it comes to big dollar Modified events, Preece’s attention can easily be captured.
Preece confirmed to RaceDayCT on Monday that he will be competing in the Modified Touring Series’ $15,000 to win Open Modified Winchester 200 on May 21 at Monadnock Speedway in Winchester, N.H.
“My dad had just mentioned to me that there was a Monadnock race paying $15,000 to win and I said ‘Well clearly we’re going to go.’” Preece said. “Everything works out. We pretty much have the week off. Eddie and I, we’re definitely going to go.”
Preece is running full-time in XFINITY Series this season for JD Motorsports. He also plans to run as many as nine NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour events for team owner Ed Partridge. Preece, the 2013 Whelen Modified Tour champion, has second place finishes in the series standings in 2012, 2014 and in 2015 in his first season driving for Partridge.
Preece said he likes the format of the Winchester 200 with a 200-green flag lap setup.
“I don’t know how some people feel about it, from a fans point, I’ve kind of read some people saying it shouldn’t be 200 laps,” Preece said. “But if they’re going to have it where you can pit as many times as you want. You might have guys riding around there and only buying one set of tires or you might have guys that are buying a couple sets of tires and burning them up and going to the front and coming in and pitting. If you can’t lose laps in the pits I think it’s going to make for the racing to be pretty enjoyable.”
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