Despite Frightening Appearance Ryan Preece Feels Fine And Ready To Race

NASCAR driver Ryan Preece returned to the track Saturday. The appearance at Darlington Raceway came a week to the day after a horrific crash at Daytona that saw his Stewart-Haas Racing Ford tumbling and pirouetting down the backstretch on the 2.5-mile superspeedway.

Preece was able to climb from the remains of the mangled racecar under his own power but was immediately placed on a backboard, wheeled to an ambulance on a stretcher as a precaution and ended up at a local hospital overnight for observation.

Saturday Preece wanted to show the world that he was ready to race and was uninjured; well almost. Preece stood behind his team’s hauler smiling and talking with the media.

“As far as the wreck goes, you guys saw it,” he said. “I was just joking with Chad Johnston, my crew chief, earlier in the day that day, because we had talked about sprint cars and midgets and if I’d like to do it. I said I would, but I don’t want to go for a flip like they do and go figure.

“I’m good. I’m OK. I’ve got no broken bones. I’m not sore. I wasn’t sore after it – a little bit of bruising, but nothing too crazy.”

Indeed, there seemed to be no outward signs of any injuries. That was until Preece removed his sunglasses revealing two red eyes with bruises underneath each.

“They aren’t bad,” Preece said. “I’m just going to put an end to it right now because what I want you all to know is racing in general, whether you’re racing a sprint car, a modified or anything, it’s dangerous. There are consequences to everything, but what we do as race car drivers is we respect one another to not put ourselves in positions to be like that.”

Preece insisted he was fine despite his somewhat shocking appearance.

“My vision is perfect, everything about it,” he said. “They don’t hurt. They look bad to you guys, but you look at a 410 (sprint car) driver after some flips and they get this. It’s from spinning in the air, all that, the blood flow, I don’t know.”

Preece most likely suffered something known as bilateral subconjunctival hemorrhaging caused by negative g-force ocular trauma. Basically, the sudden stop of the racecar after tumbling through the air led to a force under 5-negative G’s. Not enough to do any real harm but enough to give a person, like Preece, a somewhat frightening appearance, albeit a temporary one.

“I’m not a doctor and a lot of other people out there aren’t either,” Preece said. “What I can tell you is I went through all the tests. I feel fine. If I didn’t feel fine, I wouldn’t be in this car this weekend, but, obviously, I’m grateful and excited to be here.”

NASCAR has made safety improvements through the years, especially with its latest racecar, the Next Gen car. Despite the efforts, however, cars can still become airborne under the right conditions. And the experience for Preece was like others whose cars have taken flight in the past.

“I’ve seen interviews from other drivers in the past talking about when you get sideways like that and as you go in the air, it gets real quiet,” he said. “After experiencing that, that’s 100 percent true. Everything beyond that everything is happening so fast and you’re just flipping through the air. Until that ride stops all you’re thinking about is trying to contain yourself. You tense up and you hope that you’re going to be OK, which, obviously I am and was.”

Preece said he had not yet seen the remains of the car. In the days after the accident, he talked to professional Mixed Martial Arts fighter Miesha Tate, who shares a management company with him, and is someone who knows about bruising to the face. He said he wanted to understand what had happened and find assurance that he would be okay moving forward.

“Because I wanted to clear that up as quick as possible because I felt fine,” he said. “I didn’t want to feel like there was an optics issue of me showing up here to race this weekend and doing my job and fulfilling my commitment as a race car driver to my team, but as well as my guys in here because that means a lot to me.”

And while he has yet to see the car, he’s ready to help NASCAR work on improving safety.

“Yeah. I think we all do,” Preece said. “As drivers we want to be very involved in the process, so moving forward I’d like to go see the car. I’d like to explain to them what I went through as well as figuring out a way to help keep the car on the ground. I mean, we’ve come so far from the early nineties with the roof flaps and all that stuff.”

No matter what happens from this point, Ryan Preece will become part of NASCAR highlight reels forever. He will join drivers like Ricky Rudd and Davey Allison who experienced similar accidents at superspeedways. And like those drivers he will be part of the safety evolution that will make the racing safer than it was.

“I’d rather be a part of history for a better reason, for sure,” Preece said. “But at the end of the day, this is a moment for our sport to continue evolving the car, which is important, not that I want to be the one or any of us to be that person to figure out what we need to work on, but it’s going to help us get in the right direction.”

Not only was his message Saturday that he is fine, but that he wasn’t about to sit out a race.

“No way,” he said. “Why? I mean, as a racer, why? You go talk to a guy that’s racing a 410 (sprint car) or a modified, we love to race, and I feel completely fine, so why stop? I get what you’re saying. It’s OK to not race, but it’s OK to race, and I think that’s what really needs to be said here.”

As for those bruised eyes? Preece’s teammate at Stewart-Haas Racing, Aric Almirola spoke with Preece the day after the accident. Almirola and his family have extensive experience racing sprint cars. He said he wasn’t shocked to see Preece’s bruised eyes.

“You see that a lot in sprint car racers,” he said. “That’s pretty normal when you get into those violent barrel rolls, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary.

“It’s probably out of the ordinary for people that just follow stock car racing, but anybody that follows sprint car racing that happens pretty often when they take those really bad violent tumbles.”