Stewart-Haas Racing officials announced that NASCAR Cup Series driver and Berlin native Ryan Preece was released this morning from Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona, Fla.
The statement from the team read: “NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Preece was discharged from Halifax Health Medical Center earlier this morning following his accident last night in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. The driver of the No. 41 Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing is on his way home to North Carolina.”
Stewart-Haas officials had announced at 2:20 am Sunday Preece would remain hospitalized overnight following a terrifying crash late Saturday during the NASCAR Cup Series event at Daytona International Speedway.
With five laps remaining in Saturday’s event at Daytona, Preece’s car turned abruptly left and then got sideways into the grass on the backstretch. While traveling sideways the car got airborne beginning a horrifying sequence of flips before coming to rest on all four wheels.
Emergency crews removed Preece from the car. Preece, a Berlin native and former NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion, could be seen on camera during the NBC broadcast standing up with emergency officials. He was then placed on a stretcher.
NASCAR announced at 11:04 pm Saturday that Preece had been transported to a local hospital following the terrifying and violent wreck.
A post from Preece’s race update social media account at 11:24 pm read: “Ryan was transported to a local hospital where he is undergoing standard tests, he is awake, alert and obviously shaken.”
At 11:52 pm the following was posted on Preece’s official X (formerly Twitter) account: “If you want to be a race car driver, you better be tough. Dammit. Fast @racechoice @FordPerformance Mustang. I’m coming back.”
Whew!
Great news!
👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍 👍
🙏🏼
Awesome news. That was a scary wreck for sure, but it appears the safety equipment did it’s job. Never seen a car flip so violently and remain mostly intact, usually the car breaks apart. Just glad to hear he’s been released.
Rob P.
While it might visually look bad to see a car coming apart during a wreck, in most instances a car coming apart is actually a good thing. The car coming apart represents energy being released that isn’t being absorbed by the driver’s body inside the car. As long as the driver’s compartment and the cage that surrounds and protects the driver stays intact, anything else coming off the car doesn’t really matter. It’s great that Ryan was uninjured, but some serious red flags came about with this wreck. Why was the car able to get so much lift? Why did it continue to regain lift during the wreck? Why did the roof escape hatch fail exposing Preece’s head during the wreck? It also visually looked like the window net failed and the roof may have sustained some crush.
Shawn, all great points. The thing I am wondering about is that I thought these cars had some sort of roof flaps that were supposed to deploy when the car gets into that attitude to spoil the lift. The car seemed to bounce up when it was first sliding sideways, and that exposed the bottom to air and lift, by then it was too late for roof flap spoilers.
But let’s be practical… there’s no way a vehicle can be designed to protect against all that could happen. It’s amazing none of parts breaking off made it into the passenger compartment.
Do you know if there is any in-car video available? The roll rate was incredible. That the car rolled so much, and was rolling whenever it hit the ground was good because that prevents high G’s from impact. Like doing a shoulder roll if you should trip while walking. You roll over your shoulder instead of landing hard and abrupt.
After the initial lift, the car was tumbling like a gymnast on the floor exercise.
Man. And my real concern is when he smashed the ground on his roof.
Think about that ladies and gents. Nascar, tracks, and all safety involved, has done a great job. But seems to me, what gets the most attention , (and its all bad) is head first into a wall, or drivers side impacts. Its all about keeping all your insides from moving while the vehicle takes sharp hits, and your outside stops. Internal injuries. Make that brain and organs not slam into the forehead, or organs get bruised or worse, lacerated.
But when ryan slammed on his roof, holy crap, all I could think about was him being upside down and everything in his body rushing to his head, with nothing to slow it down, when the 41 smashed on its roof. I pray he is ok. That type of impact is extremely difficult to protect the driver from. No, I’m no expert, but like all of you that saw that live, it was like it was never going to stop. Hit after hit. Spin after spin. Just, wow. 🙏
Shawn, that’s what I meant. It was a bit shocking to see the car mostly intact as usually they break apart absorbing energy. But, I saw a video on youtube shows the wreck in slo mo, where you can see that parts did break away but we’re caught by tethers. The video goes through the whole wreck, it was posted by NBR, I suggest watching it.
Good to see Ryan OK. A great video on Twitter from WoO driver David Gravel wishing his fellow Connecticut driver best wishes and speedy recovery after the wreck.