DAYTONA BEACH – After winning his first race since becoming a crew chief in 2023, Derrick Finley said his driver, Ryan Preece, will follow up on his Chase for the Championship-clinching win on Saturday, Aug. 29, by winning all 10 playoff races.

“We're ready to break through a wall here,” Finley said.

It’s easy to question Finley’s thinking, especially since Preece’s final lap pass to win the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at the Daytona International Speedway was his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in 249 starts.

Nobody, however, will question Finley’s and Preece’s tenacity.

Their No. 60 RFK Ford team isn’t afraid to outwork or outfight the rest of the 16-driver Chase field. Fueled by grit and determination, Preece said winning at Daytona was a matter of refusing to lose.

“If I was in a street fight, my knuckles would be pretty tore up right now,” the 35-year-old driver from Berlin, Connecticut said. “It was much like what I told you, it was going to be a heavyweight fight.”

Preece now enters the playoffs as the 16^th-seed. He came to Daytona 31 points behind Shane Van Gisbergen for the final spot, but his bonus points earned in the first two stages and 20 extra points for winning, were enough to beat Gisbergen by 17.

Preece also knows the final 10 races, starting with Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at the Darlington Raceway, is a season into itself.

Denny Hamlin is the top seed. After re-racking the point standings for the playoffs, he will start with a 25-point cushion, 2,100-2,075, against second-seeded and 2023 Champion Ryan Blaney. Preece will start with 2,000 points.

Hamlin won the regular season by 89 points against Blaney.

“This is the time though that you’ve got to step up and find the next level and next gear,” Hamlin said after finishing 11^th at Daytona. “So, it’s on us to go out there and perform. We’ve got a great final 10 weeks ahead of us. This is the grind of the season, but you’ve got to go give a little more now.”

Hamlin has four wins this year, but Blaney’s Penske Racing team has ratcheted up its game in the last seven races, which included wins at Atlanta and New Hampshire, pole positions at Atlanta, North Wilkesboro, Iowa and Richmond and a third-place finish at Iowa.

The rest of the Chase field is Tyler Reddick, who won all five of his races before April 19, Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe, Christopher Bell, defending series champion Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Chris Buescher, Daniel Suarez, Carson Hocevar, William Byron, Bubba Wallace and Austin Cindric, who wrapped up the 15^th spot by finishing sixth at Daytona.

Preece started the final lap, which was the sixth lap of overtime, in third place behind Zane Smith and Reddick. Preece steered his Ford to the bottom groove and was just ahead of Smith and Reddick when they crashed coming off the second turn. That triggered a pileup that also included seven other cars.

Nobody was injured and Preece was ahead of Suarez when NASCAR stopped the race a mile short of the finish line with a caution period. Reddick wound up third, followed by Michael McDowell in fourth and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in fifth.

“Last year there were a lot of keyboard warriors saying I was nothing,” Preece said. “Well, we just kicked their butts tonight.”

And according to Finley, the butt-whipping will continue for the next 10 weeks.