A shocking crash at the Daytona 500 led to the driver involved in the wreck having some saddening thoughts as he tumbled through the air on Sunday evening.

Daytona International Speedway is known for its speed and tendency to have big crashes, but Sunday’s wreck in lap 196 of 201 was scarier than most.

At the front of the pack, the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota of driver Christopher Bell (who was running in second), got loose and slammed into the wall on the backstretch of the 2.5 mile tri-oval.

The collision sent Preece into the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota of Erik Jones and sent the front end of his car airborne.

NASCAR machines traveling at high speeds occasionally generate lift and that’s what happened here as Preece travelled some distance with the front end up in the air before the car was turned sideways by the air, flipped upside down, and collided with the wall before eventually skidding to a halt just before Turn 3.

Ryan Preece said thoughts of his family flashed before his eyes as he wrecked at Daytona

Preece was hit by another car, was turned sideways, and went airborne before hitting the wall

Horrifying footage from another car shows Preece’s vehicle flying through the air on Sunday

Miraculously, Preece was able to walk away from the crash unscathed.

However, he isn’t a stranger to big wrecks at this track in the past and this time, the 34-year-old Connecticut native said that thoughts of his family flashed before his eyes as he flew through the air.

‘Yeah, I don’t know if it’s the diffuser or what that makes these cars like a sheet of plywood when you walk out on a windy day,’ Preece told Fox Sports – referring to the rear-end aerodynamics of the car.

‘But when the car took off like that, and it got real quiet, all I thought about was my daughter. So I’m lucky to walk away.’ 

Preece also spoke to Frontstrech, saying that the governing body of the sport needs to change the cars so that they don’t lift as easily as he did.

‘The one thing I want to say as a father, as a racer, is we keep beating on a door hoping for a different result,’ Preece said.

‘We know where there’s a problem at Superspeedways. So, I don’t want to be the example of when it finally gets somebody – I don’t want it to be me. 

‘I got a two-year-old daughter, and just like a lot of us, we have families.

‘So something needs to be done because cars lifting off the ground like that, that honestly felt worse than Daytona in ’23.’

Preece (41) previously went airborne at Daytona at the summer race in 2023

Donald Trump hailed the bravery of the drivers as he spoke to Fox before the race started 

Preece is referring to the first time that his car flipped over at Daytona back in the 2023 running of the Coke Zero Sugar 400 – the race the track holds in the summer. 

Similarly to 2025, Preece went sideways on the backstretch and his car went airborne – flipping ten times before coming to a rest.

But unlike this year, Preece had to be taken to the hospital after getting out of the car under his own power. He was discharged the following morning – with two black, bloodshot eyes the evidence of his wreck. 

Daytona is one of the fastest tracks in NASCAR – along with Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. For decades, NASCAR mandated that cars at both tracks use restrictor plates – designed to limit the flow of air through the engine after multiple major wrecks caused cars travelling at over 200mph to go flying through the air and into catch fencing. 

This practice took place up until 2019, when NASCAR adopted a variable-sized tapered spacer to limit speed.

Restrictor plate racing often led to the cars bunching up, leading to massive crashes – colloquially known at both tracks as ‘The Big One’, where dozens of vehicles would be destroyed in the carnage. Talladega holds the record for most cars in one crash when 31 cars were involved in a wreck back in a race in 2002.

This year’s Daytona 500 featured attendance from President Donald Trump – just a week after he became the first sitting President to watch a Super Bowl.

The race finished eight hours after it had started when thunderstorms rolled through the east coast of Florida. William Byron won his second-straight Daytona 500 after avoiding a crash on the final lap to cross the line first.