DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Preece has walked away after a spectacular crash during the closing laps of the 2025 Daytona 500, going airborne and flipping down the Daytona backstretch and up the banking in Turn 3. It all occurred after a multi-car crash that began when Christopher Bell got spun in front of traffic while racing for the win with four laps to go.
Bell was racing with Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin when he got spun and hit the outside wall head on after a bump draft from Cole Custer, sending him back into traffic and into the path of Preece’s car. The impact launched the right front of Preece’s car into the air, and the left front then remained in the air after contact with Erik Jones’ car before it was finally lifted fully into the air and upside down before sliding up the Turn 3 banking and flipping back onto its wheels.
The crash marks Preece’s second flip in that section of Daytona’s backstretch, as he was involved in a terrible crash in August 2023 where his car went airborne and was then launched into a series of nearly a dozen flips. The ultimate irony of the crash is that the section of the backstretch where Preece had flipped over was paved over following the accident, which was supposed to reduce the possibility of a car going airborne and being launched the way Preece’s was.
2025 Daytona 500: Watch as Ryan Preece flips over in wild crash during closing laps of The Great American Race
Steven Taranto
Understandably, Preece was very frank in his comments after emerging from Daytona’s infield care center, pointing to characteristics of NASCAR’s current Cup cars that give them a propensity to go airborne — namely a flat underbody and the way it distributes air — and offering a stern warning from a safety standpoint on the state of superspeedway racing.
“I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what that makes these cars like a sheet of plywood when you walk out on a windy day, but when the car took off like that and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter,” Preece told Fox Sports. “So I’m lucky to walk away. But we’re getting really close to somebody not being able to.”
Preece, a Cup veteran since 2019, was making his first start for RFK Racing as the driver of the team’s No. 60 Ford. He wound up being credited with a 32nd-place finish, one of 13 cars that failed to finish this year’s Daytona 500 won by William Byron.
