Don’t expect Ryan Preece and Kyle Larson to be getting all chummy this week. Larson, who started from the pole for Sunday night’s Bristol Dirt Race and was favored to win, instead ended his night in the garage with a DNF after 177 laps.
The trouble started earlier in the race on lap 77 when Larson was racing Preece and tapped Preece sending him in the wall. Preece’s Ford broke a toe link forcing him into the pits and starting a war of words on the team’s radio about getting revenge on Larson. Including someone, apparently Preece, saying ominously, ‘game over’.
Larson would go on to win Stage 1, but later pit strategy put him outside the top 10. Then on lap 157 Larson, whose team elected not to take tires during the Stage 2 break spun by himself but was able to continue.
A few laps after that deep in the field, Larson was working on the outside of Preece when it appeared Preece moved up and sent Larson hard into the outside wall. Larson’s damage was terminal, and he went to the garage.
“He apparently thinks he’s better than everyone else, I guess you should just pull over. Especially if he’s going to race you like a dick like that,” Ryan Preece’s spotter commented to him on Kyle Larson on the team radio.
For his part Larson was aware of what had happened.
“He’s had a short temper about something earlier,” Larson said. “It is what it is. I should’ve never been back in that position anyway. I spun out and killed my race. Mad at myself more than anything.”
Later Larson told assembled media:
“A little surprised just because it’d been so long, and like I said, it wasn’t my fault why he was back there. … It’d been probably an hour and a half, I’d have to guess, since then. Figured we could just be grownups and get the fuck over it.”
Preece later tried to defend his words on the radio, including him saying ‘game over’.
“I think you just get mad getting run in the fence,” Preece said. “There was no meaning, it’s just from inside that race car you’re like, ‘I’m not going to lift.’ When it comes to being run into the fence, every time you lift, if guys see you lifting when you’re at the right-rear corner, they’re just going to keep running you up in the fence. I think when I meant game over, I meant just not going to keep lifting and giving that respect of, ‘hey, I’ll give you this room.’ It comes down to that.”
Hel also defended his action on the track saying he wasn’t trying to intentionally hit Larson.
“No, I was just trying to run the to,” Preece said. “You guys saw it. He was running the top and making ground and I tried to move up and it’s really slick if you’re not in the right spot, not racing dirt, I guess you figure that out.”
What Kyle Larson had to say about the contact with Ryan Preece at Bristol: pic.twitter.com/tJVrXEG0ce
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) April 10, 2023
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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