With just one perilous regular season race remaining at Daytona, the race to the Chase for the Championship looks like this:
Austin Cindric +44
Shane Van Gisbergen +31
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Ryan Preece -31
Brad Keselowski -66
Let’s go ahead and state the obvious. For Keselowski to get that last spot, he’s going to need everyone above him to wreck out early and he’s most likely going to need to win at Daytona.
Low odds.
On the other hand, his teammate and driver, Ryan Preece, gave himself a chance to make something happen next Saturday night with a ninth-place finish, 10 stage points and Shane Van Gisbergen finishing 20th with just two stage points.
Preece and crew chief Derrick Finely put themselves in position to challenge for at least a top five in the middle stages of the race, mostly through a two-tire stop that evened out halfway through.
They faded through the top-10.
“We did a really good job,” Preece said. “I felt like the race, the majority of it went our way. We had a really good car and before that last caution came out it looked like we were gonna go around (Bubba Wallace). We just got by (Josh Berry), so for whatever reason that last set of tires was just loose and that’s what killed us because I felt like on restarts, navigating through traffic and doing all of those things, we did everything right.”
Preece said while ‘it was a good day, it would have been even better if we had won,’ as that would have meant an even closer deficit to Van Gisbergen.
“I don’t know what to do next week other than drive the shit out it.
Recall that Preece suffered a 25-point driver’s penalty for what NASCAR felt was a retaliatory crash of Ty Gibbs at Texas Motor Speedway. That did not apply to the owner’s standings, which pay the bills in NASCAR, so Preece’s No. 60 car only needs to make up eight points on Van Gisbergen’s Trackhouse No. 97 to put his team in that version of the Chase for the Championship.
For his part, SVG told USA Sport’s Dustin Long after the race that Preece and Finley did a good job and that he wishes he had more of a cushion ‘before a bit of a big unknown’ race next weekend at Daytona.
There is a brand-new superspeedway package that will not even be practice over the weekend prior to taking the green flag. That race is the regular season finale and will decide both the driver and owner Chase for the Championships.
Photos from New Hampshire – Sunday
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