2/6/2026
Postman 68
Ryan Preece is a worthy winner of wintry Cook Out Clash
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
The addition of 80 horsepower to the NASCAR Cup Series cars suited Ryan Preece just fine.
The 35-year-old Preece was foremost among all drivers when it came to dealing with a series of rapidly changing track conditions in Wednesday night’s Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium.
Disadvantaged during practice and qualifying as one of the first drivers to take to the track, Preece started 18th in the 23-car field in his No. 60 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford.
On slick tires, with new left sides provided by Goodyear, he had made steady progress to ninth by the time the race reached the halfway break at 100 laps.
That’s when the race changed radically. As the cars returned to the garage area for adjustments, a mixture of rain and sleet began to fall, with pellets of ice bouncing off the hoods of the parked vehicles.
NASCAR declared wet race conditions, mandating the use of treaded wet-weather tires for the start of the second half of the Clash. Preece began to make his move after caution slowed the race for the seventh time on Lap 121.
On Lap 138, when NASCAR called the eighth of a Clash-record 17 cautions for a Turn 4 incident involving Denny Hamlin and Ryan Blaney, Preece was running fourth.
During a spate of five cautions in six laps (with only green-flag laps counting toward the race total), Preece climbed to second behind New Zealander Shane van Gisbergen, the most experienced wet-weather racer in the field.
With the track starting to dry, Preece bulled his way past Van Gisbergen on Lap 156 and held the lead to the finish 45 laps later, despite having to negotiate four more restarts.
“My hat is off to Goodyear,” Preece said during his winner’s press conference. “It wasn't our traditional soft tire. It was a rain tire. I still feel between them, as well as the increase in horsepower today on a quarter-mile with the gear that we're running, you could feel it. There were multiple times I couldn't go wide-open throttle. That's saying something.”
Preece has never won a points-paying Cup race. In that respect, he’s in elite company. In 47 previous editions of the Clash, only NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon and veteran Denny Hamlin won the exhibition race before visiting Victory Lane in a Cup points race.
Gordon went on to win 93 races and four championships. Hamlin currently has 60 victories—and counting.
Preece’s win was particularly meaningful to RFK Racing as a whole, given that it followed the devastating loss of former RFK driver Greg Biffle, his family and three others in a plane crash on Dec. 18.
Beyond his racing exploits, Biffle had gained recognition for his tireless rescue efforts during the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in 2024. RFK hopes to use Biffle’s memory as inspiration.
“We had a meeting with the drivers and crew chiefs and myself,” said team president Chip Bowers. “We talked about being bold, aggressive, and committed, the acronym meaning we're going to get back to the front. We do it with heavy hearts. We do it with Greg and his family in our hearts, in our minds. It's been a tough few months for us, right? We've had a little bit of tragedy to deal with.
“It's a real testament to the family atmosphere that we have in our organization and the collective commitment to be ourselves and be committed to one another, and Ryan exemplifies that.”
Despite two postponements because of severe snowfall, and despite the wintry mix that visited the quarter-mile track during Wednesday’s race, NASCAR’s determination to complete the event this week ultimately was rewarded.
Do the weather conditions of 2026 mean the Clash should move to warmer climes, as some are suggesting?
Not necessarily. It’s important to remember that the snowstorm that hit Winston-Salem was an anomaly.
And it’s important to note that weather can be a disruptive force anywhere, as it was in Los Angeles, of all places, where a massive rainstorm forced the 2024 Clash in the Coliseum to run a day early.
Photo: Jonathan Bachman -- Getty Images for NASCAR
Submitted By: Steve Post
