Ryans close out NASCAR regular seasons as first-time winners at Daytona

In 2004, Jeremy Mayfield qualified for the inaugural Chase for the NASCAR Cup when he won the very last race of the regular season. Because the format didn’t guarantee every race winner a spot in the then-ten-man Chase, Mayfield’s effort was almost a miraculous effort to steal one of the remaining spots.

Since then, his name has been verbified to mean a driver who qualifies for the postseason by winning the regular season finale. Harrison Burton was the most recent example in 2024, though his came during the win-and-you’re-in era of the playoffs.

On Saturday, with the original Chase format back (albeit with a larger field), Ryan Preece pulled a Mayfield.

Preece was 17th in the standings entering the Coke Zero Sugar 400, 31 points below the final spot held by Shane van Gisbergen to make the Chase. All things considered, Preece looked to be the underdog. Besides a 25-point penalty that he incurred at Texas earlier in the year, Daytona International Speedway has historically been one of his unluckiest tracks. More often than not, Preece’s runs at Daytona ended with his car flipping through the air and upside down.

To great relief, the only time he was in the air on Saturday was when his pit crew was throwing him upwards in celebration of his victory.

As the final lap of overtime began, Preece found himself battling with Zane Smith and Tyler Reddick for the lead. Preece stayed on the inside as he passed Smith, who ran wide and hit Reddick before spinning in front of the pack off Turn 2. NASCAR opted to keep the race green and let the leaders race to the finish, only for contact between Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. to end in the latter clipping Ryan Blaney to trigger another wreck.

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NASCAR finally waved the yellow flag just as the leaders reached Turn 3. With Preece right ahead of Daniel Suárez, he secured his first career Cup Series points victory in 249 tries (he won the exhibition Clash in February) and the 16th and final spot in the Chase.

Preece’s own personal drought wasn’t the only one that ended. His victory was just the second for the #60 in the Cup Series, with the first courtesy of Bill Rexford at Canfield Fairgrounds en route to the 1950 championship.

“I believe in the law of averages where things can only go bad for so long. I crossed the Daytona 500 finish line backwards. That was a real kick in the gut that day,” said Preece. “I mean, I love this place. Many people probably think I don’t because the hits that we take here as drivers are real, they hurt. But I’m glad Daytona decided to love me back today like I love it.”

Cup and the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series both ended their regular seasons at Daytona, while the Truck Series did so the previous week in New Hampshire. Interestingly, O’Reilly also saw a first-time winner named Ryan after a long drought…

Sieg means victory in German

The year Ryan Sieg made his debut in NASCAR’s second tier, Grand Theft Auto V came out. The year he finally scored his maiden NASCAR win at any level, Grand Theft Auto VI was a couple months away from release. While this sounds like the setup to a “before GTA 6” joke, it’s poetic that the game takes place in the Rockstar universe’s take on Florida, the same state where Sieg won for the first time. It’s even more fitting that GTA VI is the first game to include a proper circuit, even if Daytona International Speedway isn’t what it’s based on.

Sieg has almost exclusively raced for his family-owned RSS Racing, which is far from a top-flight operation but is no slouch either. He’s made the postseason before, finishing ninth in the 2016 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series standings, and had 81 top tens to his name entering Friday. He even racked up his first career pole at Iowa the race prior. Unfortunately, his equipment being in that middle ground means he’s often in position to be a contender but could never quite find the juice needed to win. Consequently, Victory Lane eluded him for a whopping 423 races in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series since his maiden race in 2013.

His hunt can be extrapolated to the other two national series too. Sieg was a regular in the Truck Series from 2009 to 2013 before graduating to the second level full-time a year later, but his best finish here was only a sixth at Phoenix in 2012. He also made six Cup Series starts in 2017 and 2019 for backmarkers, meaning he never stood a chance.

In total, since his first Truck start in 2009, he had run 537 races across all three national divisions.

424th time in O’Reilly and 538th overall time’s the charm. Rajah Caruth’s crash with two laps to go set up overtime, where Sieg restarted fourth behind the JR Motorsports front row of Carson Kvapil and Justin Allgaier. Although JRM is far and away the best team in the series, the beauty of superspeedway racing is that anyone has a chance, and doubly so if your equipment’s floor is pretty solid like RSS‘.

The opening arose almost immediately when Kvapil jumped to the outside to draft with Allgaier. Kvapil briefly pondered whether to drop back down and block Sieg but chose to stick with his team-mate, allowing Sieg to work his way up on the inside with help from Austin Hill. Sieg surged ahead to take the white flag.

Hill, the best superspeedway racer in the series today, gave Sieg enough of a draft to pull away on the backstretch. However, Sieg ended up too far ahead and lost the draft, meaning he had to decide between blocking Kvapil or Hill. He didn’t have to strategise much as neither could catch him in the end.

The previous O’Reilly record was 256 set by Jeremy Clements before winning at Road America in 2017. The late Michael Annett went 229 races until claiming the Daytona season opener in 2019, while Ed Berrier finally notched one at Hickory in 1998 after 207 tries. In the Cup Series, the longest drought before a driver finally won for the first time is Michael Waltrip at 463.

There is some irony in that Sieg is synonymous with the #39 car, but won Daytona in the #38. He opted to switch to the #38 as part of a deal with ARCA regular and O’Reilly débutant Andy Jankowiak, who drove the #39 because it is higher in owner points and therefore guaranteed a spot in the race. Sieg is the first #38 driver to win in the series since the late Jason Leffler for Braun Racing at IRP in 2007.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a baby, we’ve come here every summer race,” said Sieg. “To do it right now and the way we did it, that’s amazing. To get the pole last (week)… Just want to thank everybody that helped us out to get here—my mom and dad, my girlfriend, all the support from the whole team, everybody.

“This has been a long time coming. Last race got the pole and we came back to Daytona where I really wanted to win and we freaking did it.”

Despite the win, Sieg’s hopes of contending for the O’Reilly title are over since he was only 15th in points. The revived Chase format, which doesn’t have the win-and-in clause, means only the top 12 remain eligible.

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