Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Straight Talk 400
Sunday, March 23, 2025 — Homestead-Miami Speedway
Ford Unofficial Finishing Results:
6th – Chris Buescher
9th – Ryan Preece
11th – Zane Smith
14th – Joey Logano
16th – Noah Gragson
17th – Josh Berry
19th – Austin Cindric
26th – Brad Keselowski
28th – Cole Custer
30th – Todd Gilliand
34th – Cody Ware
36th – Ryan Blaney
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 2 Menards/Duracell Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “It was good. I feel like it was one of my best Homestead races and without the speeding penalty it could have been a really awesome points day. I thought we had a lot of versatility in our Menards/Duracell Ford Mustang and I thought that was important for keeping track position and gaining track position. I thought my guys did a really solid job on pit road today. A lot of the right pieces to execute, but I just dropped the ball on my end on the speed. A hundredth of a mile an hour, so that stings, so we have little bit to clean up but I’m proud of the total effort by everybody today.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Kroger/Farm Rich Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We used this Kroger/Farm Rich Ford Mustang up today, but it was a pretty fun day. We made some progress on it, but we still have some tweaks to be better. We’ll work on that, but this was a pretty solid Homestead given where we were the last go-round. The team made some good adjustments and we had a strong restart and was able to hang on. I wish we could have gotten one more. We were definitely faster than the 11, but we were kind of stuck in one lane and it’s the lane he wanted to run too. I just couldn’t find a lane to get by, but, overall, it’s good to be that fast down here. I’m excited.”
JOSH BERRY, No. 21 DEX Imaging Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Obviously, the incident on pit road kind of set us back, but our car was pretty decent. It just wasn’t quite the same after that, but I thought we did a good job of making the most of it. It could have been a lot worse, but obviously would have liked to been a little bit better.”
ZANE SMITH, No. 38 Aaron’s Rent to Own Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “I obviously knew our car had some speed in it, but we were going into today with me wishing it just drove a little bit better to manage throughout a run, and I feel like we more than accomplished that. The gains we made overnight were great. I was looking for more of a front end and we really accomplished that, and with that it kind of gave me the opportunity to run the bottom when a lot of people were up top. They would go bottom to try to block and I was still able to maintain up there and never really had to use the fence into one and two. I had that mistake on my end, but fortunately it was early in the race and was able to battle back from it. I knew our car was good enough to, but you just never know how these are gonna play out, especially when you lose track position. I was just really proud of the effort.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse – SECOND STRAIGHT TOP 10 TODAY. “I felt like it went pretty well today. We made an adjustment there and lost a bunch of track position, but we were definitely pretty happy with how the car was and put it back to where it was and drove forward. I’m definitely pretty happy. This is something that I’m pretty proud of and I feel like if we can just keep consistently doing it, we’ll be good.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Dent Wizard Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT DID YOU FEEL INSIDE THE CAR? “I didn’t have any warning. It just laid over when I got back to wide-open down the front and that was all she wrote. It just stinks. We had a really fast Dent Wizard Ford Mustang. We led a lot of laps. We lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me and Bubba and Larson. I’m sure Denny was gonna get back into it. It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for just giving me a hot rod. It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our heads up. It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for. We’ll keep on moving.”
