“You gotta keep moving on”: Martinsville pole-sitter Ryan Preece not racing with a chip on his shoulder after last week’s incident

After a sloppy race at Bristol Motor Speedway, Ryan Preece has made a great start to his weekend at Martinsville Speedway. Preece qualified on the pole for the NOCO 400 race at the half-mile paperclip oval in Virginia.

Preece's weekend in Bristol was scarred by multiple incidents with polesitter Kyle Larson. Preece and Larson came together on two separate occasions, with the second clash ending the latter's race.

Speaking about last week's incident at a press conference on Saturday, he said:

"It's like I have said throughout the year after some of those days where you wanna get negative or you wanna get down. Clock resets at midnight and nobody remembers. I mean we just got the pole and it's just like you gotta keep moving on you can't keep thinking about the previous week. "

NASCAR Cup Series NOCO 400 - Qualifying

Having qualified on pole, the #41 Stewart Haas Racing driver was questioned if he was driving with a "chip on his shoulder" this weekend. Preece replied that he wasn't racing with such a mindset.

The 32-year-old driver said:

"I don't know, it seems to be working right now I guess. I don't necessarily have a chip on my shoulder I think there's certainly frustrations because as a driver I know I'm putting in a lot of work, a lot of effort. I know my crew and my team, we put in a lot of effort together from the team building standpoint from a car standpoint."

He added:

"Sometimes it certainly gets frustrating when you don't the results that you feel like you work so hard for throughout the day and then statistically it doesn't look phenomenal right, especially pointwise."

Preece has been unimpressive in the early races, failing to score a top-ten finish in the first eight races. He has a single top-15 result - a 12th-place finish in Phoenix. However, starting on the front row in Martinsville, he is eager to change his fate for the rest of the season.

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A recap of what happened between Ryan Preece and Kyle Larson in Bristol

At the Food City Dirt Race in Bristol, Ryan Preece and Kyle Larson created a lot of buzz with their on-track drama. The duo ran into each other multiple times throughout the course of 250 laps.

The issues started on lap 79 when contact between Larson and Preece sent the latter into the wall. Preece expressed his dissatisfaction a few laps later, as he ran alongside the #5 Chevrolet shaking his hand.

100 laps later, the pair made contact again at Turn 4 but continued down the front stretch before a bump from Preece sent Larson into the wall at Turn 1. The #5 was wrecked after the incident and couldn't finish the race, while Preece finished 24th.

Both drivers admitted that the contacts were unintentional.