Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Cook Out 400 Qualifying
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Ford Qualifying Results:
6th – Chris Buescher
7th – Joey Logano
14th – Josh Berry
19th – Zane Smith
20th – Austin Cindric
21st – Ryan Preece
22nd – Cole Custer
24th – Noah Gragson
25th – Todd Gilliland
27th – Brad Keselowski
32nd – Ryan Blaney
36th – Cody Ware
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Kroger/Old El Paso Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “That was pretty solid. I didn’t think we were gonna be worse than seventh or eighth, so that puts us with a lot of good track position to start the race. That will put us with a good pit stall. We all know who hairy pit road can be here, so I’m really proud of everybody for that. This is certainly not my strongest racetrack, so it’s a good start for a good race weekend.”
WHAT KIND OF GRIND IS THIS PLACE? “It’s work (laughing). It’s a really racy track and has been for a long time. You look at it on TV and it looks like a little flat paperclip track. It’s unassuming. You go walk around this place there’s a lot of banking for a short track. There’s a lot more than you realize and then you have the asphalt/concrete challenges as well, but there’s obviously a lot of history around this place. It’s always fun to come up here. It’s a racetrack that admittedly hasn’t been my strongest, but I’m looking forward to the day I get this place figured out and can call it one of my favorites.”
WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT THE START FOR YOU AND RYAN SO FAR? “Yeah, we’ve had a lot of potential across all three of our race cars. We’ve had a lot of speed and a lot of really strong finishes. We haven’t quite been in the hunt to win a race yet or not quite good enough to win, but certainly proud of what we’ve been doing and knowing that we need a little bit more yet. We are still hunting that. We’re not sitting still over here, but it’s a good start to the season. One of our main goals at the beginning of the year was to fire off with a lot more potential than we’ve had the past few years for this first handful of races and we’ve got that, but we want race wins and checkered flags and clocks in the back of the truck and trophies up on the shelf, so we’re still hunting.”
WHAT ARE YOU ABLE TO DO MORE OF NOW THAT YOU’VE GOTTEN OFF TO A BETTER START? “For us, we’re much closer to baselines and stuff to work on versus having to wholesale race cars throughout a weekend or throughout a race. I wouldn’t say we’re blindly guessing because we’re never doing that, but we’re not having to swing so hard to find where we’re trying to get to and with that sometimes it’s hard on the other side of it because we’re certainly pretty decent but we want to be better. We don’t want to get complacent here, so we still have to keep pushing but at least we feel like we’re making smaller swings.”
WHAT DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS PLACE AND THE POTENTIAL OF WINNING HERE? “This is not my best racetrack, but we’ve had a couple solid top 10s here. Brad runs really well here. Ryan runs really well here, so we have a lot of good things to go off of and we just qualified really well, so I’m really proud of everybody with this Kroger/Old El Paso Ford Mustang to be that close to the front. That’s a heck of a start for us. I don’t want to talk about clean air and dirty air, but unfortunately it makes a difference no matter where we go and we’ll take all we can get, but then just as importantly a good pit stall selection and a lot of things that can certainly help this be one of our stronger Martinsville days.”
THERE HAVE BEEN A NUMBER OF PIT ROAD INCIDENTS THIS YEAR. WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE AND HOW DIFFICULT IS IT NAVIGATING PIT ROAD? “These pit roads haven’t changed, we’re just closer together than we’ve ever been, whether that’s speedway racing, road course racing, short track racing, we’re closer together, so you have more cars on pit road at the same time. The cars are quite robust and so no one is willing to give anything. The old steel-bodied cars if somebody came out from a pit box and you think you have a nose up on their rear bumper, you’re gonna concede that because you’re not gonna take a risk of ripping a left-front fender off. Now, there’s no penalty for that. People just try and muscle through and bumper car down and it makes chaos on pit road. We’ve watched a lot of it. We’ve been really close to a lot of it this year. We have strategically chosen pit stalls to try and stay away from some of the areas where we’ve been part of the chaos in the past and Scott and our group have done a nice job at keeping us out of that very largely this season.”
