Ryan Preece found out he’d been penalized by NASCAR for wrecking Ty Gibbs in Texas the same way most people discover bad news these days.
Not in a meeting. Not in a phone call with a carefully measured tone. Not even while sitting somewhere remotely prepared for consequences.
He was mowing his lawn.
Somewhere around 4:30 p.m., phone reception doing its best impression of a damp paper towel, Preece was mid-yardwork and when he was done his phone showed a missed call. He rang back, expecting… well, probably anything other than what came next.
NASCAR had issued a penalty.
“Honestly, I’m a bit surprised,” Preece said Saturday at Watkins Glen. “I’m thankful that NASCAR has an appeals process, so I feel like I can be heard and let that process play out.”
It’s a very modern NASCAR sentence, really. Equal parts frustration, resignation, and procedural optimism. And it now defines the latest chapter in a growing tension between Preece and Ty Gibbs that started in Texas and has spilled neatly into the more serene surroundings of Watkins Glen — a place where the scenery is calm, the hills are green, and the grudges still travel at 180 mph.
The penalty itself is not subtle. NASCAR docked Preece 25 driver points and fined him $50,000 after ruling the contact with Gibbs was intentional, citing both the on-track move and the radio chatter leading up to it as evidence of intent. RFK Racing has already confirmed it will appeal.
Which is where Preece now finds himself: in that familiar NASCAR holding pattern where everyone insists the matter is both serious and ongoing, while also trying to get on with their actual jobs.
“I was on my mower,” he explained, “mowing my lawn at about 4:30 p.m. in an area that does not have great signal. I just saw that I had a missed call, so when I made the call back, I found out that I had a penalty.”
There’s something almost cinematic about it. A driver unknowingly entering the penalty phase of his season while cutting grass. It feels less like a NASCAR storyline and more like the opening scene of a dark comedy where nobody bothers to tell the main character the plot has already moved on without him.
What makes the situation sharper is the context behind it. The Texas incident with Gibbs wasn’t just a stray piece of contact in a long night. NASCAR’s decision leaned heavily on intent — the suggestion that what happened wasn’t simply hard racing gone wrong, but frustration carried out in real time once the opportunity presented itself.
Preece, for his part, isn’t diving into public back-and-forth. At least not yet.
“There is nothing right now,” he said when asked if he had spoken to Gibbs.
No reconciliation tour. No handshake moment. Just distance, paperwork, and the slow machinery of an appeals process that now carries as much weight as the incident itself.
Instead, Preece is leaning on RFK Racing, and specifically the support of Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher, as the situation plays out. In a sport where alliances inside teams often matter as much as speed on track, that backing is its own kind of armor.
Still, Watkins Glen doesn’t care much about Texas, penalties, or paperwork. It’s a road course that rewards precision and punishes distraction, which means Preece now has the added challenge of trying to reset his season while the background noise of last weekend continues to hum.
The irony, of course, is that nothing about this situation feels accidental anymore. Not the incident. Not the ruling. Not even the timing.
And certainly not the fact that one of NASCAR’s latest disciplinary headaches began with a driver on a lawnmower, briefly out of signal, trying to keep his grass under control while the rest of his professional life quietly changed direction without him noticing.
Gibbs starts 10th Sunday, Preece 30th. A meeting on the track isn’t out of the question, but it could happen just as unexpectedly as a penalty call coming through while mowing the grass.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour 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, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.