TALLADEGA, Ala. — RFK Racing's Ryan Preece couldn't help but smile as he stood next to his battered No. 60 Ford Mustang on pit road.
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He and his two teammates had completely shaken up Sunday's race at Talladega Superspeedway and stunned every other team on the NASCAR grid. They had raced all out while every other competitor focused on fuel-saving.
And as it turns out, this was not something that the team planned before essentially saying, "screw it, let's push the pace." Preece, Brad Keselowski, and Chris Buescher just grew tired of completing glorified parade laps.
"I think that just came up the lap before we went," Ryan Preece told FanBuzz on pit road after the race. "So that was pretty badass, wasn't it?"
The strategy unfolded during the 98-lap opening stage of Sunday's Chase race. The field ran three-wide between 25-32% throttle while trying to get the best fuel mileage possible.
This a strategy that the crew chiefs called for, but it was one that exasperated the drivers as they circled the 2.66-mile superspeedway at a slower pace than the minimum required speed.
Suddenly, the three RFK Racing cars shot out from the pack. They began racing away while quickly building a gap to the rest of the field. This put the trio 10 seconds ahead of the field.
lol pic.twitter.com/vMydrIBP0E
— RFK Racing (@RFKracing) October 25, 2026
This advantage then increased to 20.98 seconds on Lap 38. It continued to increase as it reached 27 seconds, 30 seconds, and even 45 seconds before the green flag pit stops on Laps 50, 51, and 52.
"The key to racing is always being the first one," Preece added. "Whether that be in the shop, on the track, strategy, whatever it may be, you find the advantage."
That advantage remained through the green flag pit cycle. The RFK Racing cars remained at the front of the pack even as the other drivers in the field began trying to chase them down.
They built their advantage back up to 40 seconds while adding Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and AJ Allmendinger to the small group. Though Keselowski began to save fuel, which slowed their pace significantly.
The members of this trio still won the first stage by 17.49 seconds. Buescher took the 10 points while Preece and Keselowski finished second and third, respectively. Kyle Larson, the eventual race-winner, crossed the line fourth.
The No. 17 Ford of @Chris_Buescher wins the opening stage, as points leader @KyleLarsonRacin earns seven stage points. pic.twitter.com/Ny60ZLbqGs
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 25, 2026
"We had some conversations early about what a situation like that could look like, somebody pitting off early and going hard," Cliff Daniels, Larson's crew chief, said about the RFK Racing strategy. "Credit to those guys, they stuck to it. They nailed it. They did it really well.
"We felt like in that hypothetical situation before the race that the field would stick to what we thought the field was going to do, which was going to be save and get to around that lap 50 and lap 60.
"To do it all over again, we're certainly going to go back I'm sure tonight and tomorrow and look at how to have gotten on board with that sooner. How do you defend that?
"But in the moment, we really didn't want to panic and put ourselves in a spot where, knowing that the Fords typically get better mileage than us, that we were going to be too penalized on what our mileage was going to be to try to make pace with that."
The bold strategy of running hard during the race's longest stage paid off early for RFK Racing. The three drivers scored points and ensured that just over half of the field fell a lap down.
The advantage didn't last. Once the field got shuffled back together for the 40-lap second stage, every driver began pushing hard. This broke up the RFK Racing train.
Only Buescher scored points in the second stage. He and Keselowski then failed to finish the race due to accidents in the final stage.
"We nailed the stage 1 strategy," Keselowski said. "I was really proud of the team. The car didn't drive the best but we kind of fought through it and got caught up in the big one."
Preece missed out on points in the second stage, and he finished 13th after being collected in one of the late-race incidents.
He didn't contend for the win, but he had an absolute blast showing that it pays to think outside of the box. Now, he hopes that this leads to greater things in the future as NASCAR continues to examine the superspeedway racing product.
And yes, he realizes that teams will be far more prepared in the future to prevent this move by RFK Racing.
"I'm pumped that we did that because I'm a racer and I want people to push the shit out of things to be the first one because we all benefit from it," Preece said.
"Hopefully that sets the tone for the offseason and everything we're going to work on for next year."
