Amid the ongoing clash controversy between Ryan Preece and Ty Gibbs at Texas, Preece has refused to yield. Defending his actions, the RFK Racing driver admitted to having a 'short-fuse'.

“I was right there and I felt like he came down and I was not going to cut him a break because in the past he and I have had problems so I’ve got a little bit of a short fuse with him and I with how we’re racing and that was just one of those situations," said Preece. "Could I cut them a break? Probably could have, but I didn’t.”

Notably, Preece mentioned above having an old beef with Ty Gibbs, hence the "short fuse." The incident took place on Lap 101 when Preece drove into Turn 3 and cut in front of Ty Gibbs.

Earlier in the race, an aggressive move by Gibbs had frustrated Preece. So when the two raced each other on lap 101, Preece reportedly hit the rear bumper of Gibbs. No. 54, ending his race. Though Preece had radioed, "Never touched him" during the clash.

“I’ll be honest with you. I hate that he wrecked, but decisions you make on the race track, there are repercussions,” Preece had said post the race.

"I try to race everybody with an amount of respect that I’d like in return. And when you don’t do that, I’m not gonna cut you a break."

Although Ryan Preece achieved a significantly better result (14th), he received a monetary penalty and a point deduction for this incident.

NASCAR fined Ryan Preece $50k for Texas incident

Due to the contact that he made with Ty Gibbs, NASCAR decided to fine him $50,000 and deduct 25 points. Sharing the reason behind, here's what NASCAR Mike Forde said:

"We try to look at prior instances. The deliberation on how we wanted to handle this one, was the Denny Hamlin penalty. When he wrecks Ross Chastain at Phoenix a few years ago, and then the next day, talked about it on his podcast, he later got the same penalty.

"So, he [Preece] said what he said, and then he did what he said. And so, in our view, it was intentionally wrecking another vehicle. That’s where we landed.”

By prior incidents, Forde was talking about how NASCAR penalized Denny Hamlin for the same in 2023. Interestingly, Kyle Busch also made contact with John Hunter Nemechek in the final laps of the race. However, he evaded NASCAR's axe, which Ryan Preece had to come out empty-handed.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Sabyasachi Biswas

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason