Ryan Preece is 75/1 to win 2023 Pennzoil 400 at LVMS

 

RYAN PREECE Las Vegas Motor Speedway Advance  No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing

Event Overview

Event:  Las Vegas 400 (Round 3 of 36)  Time / Date:  3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 5  Location:  Las Vegas Motor Speedway  Layout:  1.5-mile oval  Laps / Miles:  267 laps / 400.5 miles  Stage Lengths:  Stage 1: 80 laps / Stage 2: 80 laps / Final Stage: 107 laps  TV / Radio:  FOX / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio

Notes of Interest

● Ryan Preece will make his seventh NASCAR Cup Series start Sunday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and his first with Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR). In his previous six outings on the 1.5-mile desert oval, he posted a best finish of 15th in the March 2021 race.     ● Preece has made two NASCAR Xfinity Series starts at Las Vegas and tallied a best finish of sixth after starting 34th in September 2018 for Joe Gibbs Racing. He’s had one NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at the track, and it came last season for David Gilliland Racing. He started fifth and finished fourth, leading three laps.     ● Preece was a victim of circumstances last Sunday at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, getting caught up in a nine-car accident on a lap-88 restart. To that point, he had worked with the No. 41 team on adjustments that would enhance the racecar’s performance in clean air. He was credited with a 33rd-place finish.    ● Preece opened the 2023 points-paying season with a strong showing in the 65th running of the Daytona 500 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway. Preece and the No. 41 Ford Mustang qualified 20th and had the best 10-consecutive-lap average in final practice. On race day, he finished second in Stage 1 and was running up front for a majority of Stage 2 until being involved in a multicar incident in turn two on lap 183. Preece was unable to return to the race and finished 36th.     ● Returning to the SHR No. 41 Ford Mustang in 2023 is HaasTooling.com, the cutting tool division of Haas Automation led by team co-owner Gene Haas. HaasTooling.com was launched as a way for CNC machinists to purchase high-quality cutting tools at great prices. Haas cutting tools are sold exclusively online at HaasTooling.com and shipped directly to end users. HaasTooling.com products became available nationally in July 2020. Haas Automation, founded in 1983, is America’s leading builder of CNC machine tools. The company manufactures a complete line of vertical and horizontal machining centers, turning centers, rotaries and indexers, and automation solutions.

Ryan Preece, Driver of the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang for Stewart-Haas Racing:

What’s your mindset heading into this weekend’s race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway?  “We’ve got to get to Las Vegas this weekend and be on offense. We’re in a big hole right now and we’ve got to start digging ourselves out of it. Last weekend’s finish in Fontana was a really bad ending for our team. We got caught up in something that shouldn’t have even happened. We didn't get the chance to really see how our car would have been in clean air after we worked for a majority of stage one to get things right. That’s a bummer all around and this team is really focused on turning things around in Vegas.”    What happened during that multicar accident that put you out of the race at Fontana?  “It was kind of stupid, to be honest with you on a professional level – we all wreck on a restart. I don’t know what happened, but just a victim of circumstances. It sucks. I was racing around Aric (Almirola, SHR teammate), and we were just trying to be smart and get to the end of the race. Something like that, you’re not expecting everyone to wreck coming to the restart line. It’s unfortunate. That adjustment could have gotten us a lot better, and we could have kept on making little gains. That was our goal, not to beat ourselves and just be there in the last 50 or 60 (laps). That’s why we stayed out that run, to see what our car would do in clean air and if we needed to work on it, which we did, and I felt like we just kept on making it better and better. It was really a bad ending for the No. 41.”    Your last Cup Series start at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was in 2021, and now you’ll make your first start at the track in the Next Gen car. What’s the racing like at Las Vegas and what do you expect this weekend? “Las Vegas is a place that I typically like and look forward to going to. This is our first time with the Next Gen car for myself and Chad but I feel confident about it. Leading up to this weekend, I feel pretty excited just about the direction we’re heading in and hopefully bringing some speed and having a good day. Speed hasn’t been in an issue for us this season. The speed is there, we’ve just got to get a good finish for our No. 41 Ford Mustang team and I think Las Vegas can be the place for that.”