Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Martinsville Media Availability
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Josh Berry, driver of the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Dark Horse and Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Advance Auto Parts Ford Mustang Dark Horse, both stopped by the infield media center at Martinsville Speedway and answered questions. Below is a transcript of both Q&A sessions.
JOSH BERRY, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW COOL IS IT FOR YOU TO BE A PART OF THE WOOD BROTHERS TEAM DURING THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY SEASON? “It’s exciting. Obviously, seeing all of the photos in the tunnel walking in here was really cool. They’re really close by, so it’s a home race for them and we’re gonna try to do our best to have a good weekend.”
THREE OF THE FORMER SHR DRIVERS IN THE TOP 16 IN POINTS. WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT ALL OF YOU? “I don’t know. That’s a hard question to answer. I don’t want anybody to feel slighted, but we’ve had good starts to the season. Obviously, last year was a difficult ordeal to manage. Honestly, I feel like the place was falling down around us. We were just trying to do the best we could week in and week out, and for my team – Rodney and the 4 team – I think they were the cornerstone of that place for years, but, without a doubt, I think we’ve all found good opportunities.”
WHAT DO YOU TAKE AWAY FROM PHOENIX THAT YOU APPLY HERE AND CAN THAT CARRY OVER? “I hope so. I think that the 21 car has been pretty solid here. The Team Penske cars are always good here and I feel like we can carry that momentum. I love coming here. I feel like it should be a good opportunity for us. If we can just keep on doing what we’ve been doing, qualifying well on Saturday and stay up front in the race.”
THERE IS POTENTIAL FOR SOME RAIN TOMORROW WHICH COULD LEAD TO WET WEATHER TIRES. YOU WERE THIRD AT NEW HAMPSHIRE THE LAST TIME ON THOSE. WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF THOSE WET WEATHER TIRES? “I don’t know. It was interesting last year when we did that at Richmond and New Hampshire. Honestly, all of our cars last year ran really well on the rain tires, which I don’t really know why, but our cars were honestly more competitive on those tires than the tires we ran normally compared to the field. I felt like I have a good feel of what I need to do. I’m just gonna have to work with Miles and try to prepare for that scenario the best we can if it does come.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR THROWBACK SCHEME FOR DARLINGTON? “It’s a really cool story. The Wood Brothers pitted Jim Clark’s Ford-powered Lotus in the Indy 500 and that’s what we’re throwing back to because they won the race (1965), but it was really cool to hear the stories from Leonard about how much it meant to him. You think somebody that’s been in NASCAR for 75 years and accomplished all of these amazing things, for him to say that moment was one of the most memorable that he’s had in his entire life really puts into perspective how big of a moment it was. There was a lot of ingenuity that the Wood Brothers brought to that team to speed up the pit stops and Len and Eddie, they got all of that down to the seconds that they saved. They know the story way better than me, but it’s really just a cool deal. It was Ford’s first win in the Indy 500, so there were a lot of cool moments. We’re excited for it.”
HOW DO YOU RATE YOURSELF AT DARLINGTON AND WHAT DO YOU EXPECT? “Darlington is always a tough one. If you have a good car, you look like a hero. If you have a bad car, you don’t. It’s that kind of thing. Last year, I had two really good cars there and ran really well. We didn’t get the finish we wanted in the Southern 500 with an accident there at the end, but I feel good about it. We ran third in the spring. If we can translate some of what I learned last year and apply it to the 21 car, hopefully we can have a good day.”
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR IN THIS MARTINSVILLE PRACTICE? WHAT IS THE GAME PLAN? “I think not really overthink it, honestly. The track is gonna change a lot between the first group and the second group. The second group is gonna be way slower with all the rubber on the track, so just making sure your car turns well, can maneuver through the rubber or stay out of the rubber if you need to, and just kind of try to separate that from qualifying and just go out and hit a good lap. One thing I love about coming here is I’ve been here a lot. I’ve made a lot of laps around this place compared to most places that we go, so, for me today, I think we just go out and do what we’ve been doing, not overthink it and we’ll be fine.”
DOES WINNING EARLY IN THE SEASON CHANGE YOUR GOALS ON WHAT YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE THE REST OF THE YEAR? “Yeah. I think that’s a fair way to put it. I feel like, for me, I’ve never been a real goal setter, but obviously for a majority of the field, aside from a handful of guys that you want to call the favorites for the championship, their goal is to make the playoffs. So, to accomplish that, hopefully barring anything crazy, it was a big deal already. That’s a big positive for us, so now I think it’s about working together and getting better, staying competitive over the course of the summer and then just kind of see what happens when we make it to the playoffs. A lot of it comes down to just finishing and execution and being there at the end of the races. There’s no reason why we can’t advance through a couple rounds of the playoffs.”
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF GETTING TO DRIVE THE 21 AND WHAT’S THE BIGGEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU’VE GOTTEN FROM THEM ABOUT DRIVING THE CAR? “Obviously, meeting with the Wood Brothers and beginning that process was something that was really cool. They’re just a great family. It’s a family-run business, a family race team. They’ve been around 75 years, which is truly amazing what they’ve been able to do. I think to add my name as a driver for them and now a winner for them has been really special and I’m just looking forward to keeping it going at this point. Honestly, they haven’t given me a lot of advice. They just want me to go out and do what they know I can do. That’s why they hired me and so far we’ve been doing a pretty decent job with that.”
THIS IS THE THIRD RACE FOR THIS TIRE. DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA OF WHAT TO EXPECT? “I don’t know. I think that’s a hard question to answer, but the reality is the best way I can say it is Martinsville at night time it doesn’t lay rubber. At daytime it lays rubber. It doesn’t matter what tire you’ve got. We raced late model stocks all over the country and we ran a Hoosier F45 at every track in the country and it laid rubber during the day and as soon as it started cooling off it stopped. I think if we have sun and good weather tomorrow, I think it will lay a lot of rubber, which I think will help make the racing better – move the line around a little bit. If it stays kind of overcast and rainy, then I think it will be more of like what we saw in the truck race, which you could tell towards the end that the cars were super edgy, the pace was really fast. There was no rubber on the track, so I think that it really has as much to do with the weather as it does the tire.”
DO THE DIFFERENT LENGTHS OF THESE MARTINSVILLE RACES DICTATE ANY KIND OF DIFFERENT APPROACH? “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think it really changes too much. Obviously, 400 or 500 laps is still a lot of laps here, but the fall race is definitely a little bit more of a grind from that aspect and a little more traditional length, but I think it’s a good balance. I love running laps around this place, so however many they have I’ll hopefully be out there.”
HOW DOES RUNNING IN A LATE MODEL HERE HELP YOU GET AROUND BETTER IN THE CUP SERIES? “I think the biggest thing is just having the experience, really. We came here and we’d get a test day and then come back for the race. I’ve just run way more laps here compared to a lot of the tracks that I go to. In the Cup Series, you’ve got guys that have been going to Homestead since 2005, 2006 or however long, so it’s like when you come here I feel a little bit more at home just because I’ve been here a lot. I have a lot of great memories here. I love coming back here. That late model race, I still keep looking back at that picture on the back wall there of Phillip and Lee. Just winning that race was a big moment for me.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON PIT ROAD LAST WEEK? “It was just really bad timing, I guess. We watched it all together on Monday – me and Joey and Paul, Miles, all of us. It’s hard to have a right or wrong move there. I knew that I was three and then Joey left. The first thing to do is, ‘I don’t want to run into him,’ so I tried to move over hoping we would have a little bit more space and we just didn’t. Looking back, for me, I think I’ve just got to bail, honestly. I’ve just got to stop and let Joey get out and lose a couple spots and live with the result. These races are long. Our car was never the same. The toe was tweaked on it a little bit. The fender was all broken. I thought we went from having a top 10 car to, at best, a 15th, 16th, 17th place car after that. You’ve just got to live to fight another lap and just bail on it.”
YOU’LL LIKELY FACE THAT SITUATION AGAIN, SO HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH IT IN THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT? “It’s hard. It’s most definitely hard to do that because you’re taking in a lot. You’re trying to gauge the pace of your pit stop versus the cars around you and how fast their pit stop is gonna be. You’re looking in the camera to see what’s coming behind. You’re listening to your spotter. You’re trying to do a lot of things at once, so it is hard in those scenarios sometimes to avoid it. I think, for us, Miles felt like we qualified second and maybe we should have picked further down pit road to keep ourselves out of that bottleneck that happens three quarters of the way down, but it’s definitely hard to avoid those situations, but, ultimately, the penalty is way worse when you’re facing backwards and going all the way to last.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Advance Auto Parts Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU HAVE A THROWBACK SCHEME FROM 2006 FOR DARLINGTON BASED ON YOUR DAD’S CAR. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THAT AND WHAT IS IT LIKE TO REPRESENT YOUR DAD AT THAT THROWBACK RACE? “It was neat to get that out there. I think the car looks pretty good. We couldn’t do the avocado green where it’s blue. I was really pushing to have the avocado texture from that car, but we couldn’t do that, unfortunately. It’s neat. I think the font of the numbers bring back a lot of memories for people with the Braun race team. There were a lot of good people on that team. Trent Owens was the crew chief of that car and dad and Trent have known each other for a long time. It’s always good to see Trent around the racetrack. I, unfortunately, wasn’t there. None of my family was there, which was bizarre. I think my sister had a basketball tournament and we were there instead of in Charlotte and it figures my dad wins it and we don’t get to celebrate with him. I’ve been lucky. We did his Jasper scheme from ‘02 or ‘03 one year, which was really neat and now to do that one means a lot to him. It’s cool that we can do that stuff, so it’s pretty special and I’m looking forward to getting it out there.”
HAVE YOU GOTTEN ANY INSIGHT ON WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE ENGINE ISSUE FROM LAST WEEK AND IF IT WAS SIMILAR TO EARLIER THIS YEAR? “We talked through it all week and RYE and Penske and all of us being in discussions – ‘Hey, what happened? What went wrong? What was the cause of it?’ We believe there were separate issues from Phoenix and Homestead. They’re working hard on trying to figure out why this issue at Homestead happened. We knew why the one at Phoenix happened. We kind of figured out that problem and I think we’ve got our arms around why this one at Miami happened and hopefully we’ve taken the correct procedures to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s just unfortunate that two out of three weeks we’ve had an issue there, but those folks work really hard. I hadn’t had an engine failure in a long time, so it’s not like it’s common with those folks. It’s just one of those things. That’s a bummer, but I think we have a really good idea of what went wrong and they’re doing all they can to figure out how can we make that not happen again.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY INSIDE THE CAR TO PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING? “No, it really wasn’t a part of that. Sometimes it is. You can look at data and say, ‘I really over-revved the downshift,’ but that really wasn’t the case. It was a separate issue, so we’ve just got to dig into why this happened. Was there a piece that was different or maybe made differently? They just kind of go back into the order of things, but they did a good job of trying to figure out what it was and now they’re taking big steps to make sure it doesn’t happen to any other Fords out there.”
HOW TOUGH HAS DANIEL HEMRIC’S JOURNEY BEEN? YOU WERE THERE SUPPORTING HIM YESTERDAY. “Daniel is a good friend of mine. He and I grew up racing a lot with each other on the Legend car side. We got to spend a lot of weekends on the NASCAR side together in different series and I was happy for him to get the win last night. I was happy his family was there, which was really neat to have your family there. He’s been through a lot. He’s been through ups and downs of getting chances and them just not working out and then trying to find, ‘OK, what’s the best way that I can find a good home that I can be competitive and go win at and contend for championships.’ And I think he’s found a really good place there and then you just hope that success continues and you try to rebuild back up to where you want to be. He’s had a lot of adversity thrown his way during his career, but he’s never given up. He’s always been a gritty guy and always done what he needed to do to be successful, so it’s always refreshing when you see really good guys who have maybe not gotten great chances and have kind of jumped around series go win races and be successful. I was really happy for him and it helps that he’s a good friend of mine, too. I think everyone likes seeing the backflip. We haven’t seen a backflip in a while, so it was nice to see that, but he’s fought through a lot and it’s nice to see it all paid off last night.”
HOW TO YOU MENTALLY PREPARE FOR DARLINGTON NEXT WEEK? “It is a tough place. I think it’s one of the toughest places we go, more mentally than anything for me, I think. Like, how do you stay in it for that long? I just feel like the mental mush that your brain is in after leaving that race is pretty high because your concentration level is at 110 percent the whole time. At some places you can kind of get in these zones of kind of like a relaxation mode to an extent of just kind of getting in your flow and doing things, and some of that is at Darlington, but I feel like every lap is just a battle to try to find speed and not find the fence. I kind of relate it to Homestead in a way, but Homestead is a lot wider. You have more room for error, unless you’re pinned on the fence, but Darlington it just sneaks up at you more. There’s less room to work, so I think that’s what makes that place so difficult and the two ends being vastly different is definitely a challenge. I’m gonna be honest with you, I haven’t thought much about Darlington. I have 100 percent of my mind on this weekend and then Monday morning I’m gonna switch to Darlington. It’s a tough place mentally and physically too, it wears you out, so it’s just how do you survive the whole thing and how do you not put yourself in terrible positions to where it can hurt your night. I haven’t finished a race at Darlington in about a year either, so I hope to do that.”
IS NOW THE TIME WHEN YOU REALIZE WHO THE CONTENDERS AND PRETENDERS ARE OR ARE WE STILL SORTING THAT OUT? “I think you can get a really good feed on it after Bristol going into the Easter break because you get through a lot of tracks in that span of time – a lot of different variations of racetracks and things like that. I’d say give it a few more weeks.”
WHAT IS THE ART OF RACING ON A WET TRACK? “Are you saying it’s gonna rain on Sunday? Are you on that boat (laughing)? We’ve had some experience with it the last couple of years. It is always a little bit different when you go to these new places that it could potentially rain at that you haven’t been to in the rain like here, and I think this would be the first place that we’ve gone, if it does rain, of like concrete and asphalt surfaces. So it’s like, concrete always dries faster than asphalt, so the corners are gonna get dry really quick. I think the truck race last year was that way, or two years ago, and the corners were completely dry and the straightaways still had a little bit of water on them, so how does that play into it? It could get exciting. Do I hope it rains Sunday? No, I like this place enough in the dry that I hope it’s just more of a traditional race, but you’ve got to be prepared for everything. I don’t know if it will change up much. You still want to go for the concrete and it will be a little bit easier to see what concrete patches are dry. Sometimes it’s hard to tell on asphalt. The asphalt is dark and it’s hard to make that judgment, but with concrete you’ll be able to tell right away. It will be the same for everybody, so you just hope you do it better than everybody else.”
DID YOU HAVE TO DO ANYTHING DIFFERENT HERE AT MARTINSVILLE WHEN THE CAR CHANGED? DID IT MAKE A DIFFERENCE? “Yeah, it definitely did. I think everyone had to change their style up a little bit when you went from the previous car to this one. It’s the same everywhere. You kind of had to change it up of how you approach each place and how you race it. I don’t know which one I prefer here more. I feel like this place has gotten better with this car with this soft tire. I think we’ve been able to move around more. I didn’t think with the old car, the second lane wasn’t there as much as it is with this car and I think that’s just more on Goodyear getting softer and softer and laying rubber down to where you can move around, but I also think the other car was a little bit better in dirty air to where you didn’t have to have that second lane, so it’s just kind of trade offs. I know you’re shifting a lot. I mean, you’re shifting four times a lap around here, so that’s definitely changed the way you get into the corner and approach the center speed of it, so I definitely had to change up I just got fortunate that when I kind of came here with my mindset that it worked with this car with how I changed up from the Gen 6 car. We’ve had good runs here, you just continue to try to keep having them.”
WHAT SHOULD FANS WATCH FOR ON RESTARTS HERE? “Sometimes you’ll get the occasional three-wide dive bomb you have to watch for and then it’s just a matter of, obviously, the bottom is preferred, but am I gonna give up a row to choose the bottom? That’s like a gametime decision and it’s kind of all about how has the top been in this race. You try to notice those things on restarts. I talk with Timmy a lot like, ‘OK, what has kind of been dominant? Has eighth been better than seventh? Or should I choose ninth instead of eighth? Is that gonna play out for me well?’ So it just kind of depends, taking chances and seeing what lanes have worked. The choose rule here is pretty tough and pretty difficult of what you want. All of the short tracks are because you know what you want, but you don’t really want to give up much if you want to get in the preferred lane. Restarts can be pretty crazy and then the stack ups halfway in the field are pretty big, so you have to be ready for that. And, like I said, you never know who is gonna throw it in there three-wide and mess it all up for you.”
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST THING YOU TOOK FROM YOUR TIME DRIVING WITH THE WOOD BROTHERS? “The fondest memory I have is winning Pocono with those guys. I think what I took from that whole family was just – Eddie said something to me when I went to Penske going into ‘18 and it just kind of let you know how they operate over there. He told me, ‘Even though you’re not driving for us anymore, you’re still part of our family.’ They’re just open armed people. No matter what history you have with us. If you were working with us for a day, 30 years, you’re part of the Wood family and I think that really said a lot. I think that’s why they’ve been around for 75 years is because they’re great people who have been revolutionary in this sport and have also molded with the times – don’t burn any bridges, everybody wants to work with those guys, so I have a lot of fond memories of them and it was so much fun racing for those guys and seeing how they operate from Eddie and Len and Leonard and when Glen would come to the races it was pretty neat just to be in their presence and be racing for a team that has meant so much to the sport and the sport has meant so much to their family as well. No one is gonna be around for 75 years if they don’t really care about what they do and they don’t love it with a passion. I think that speaks volumes to the dedication that they have to racing and NASCAR. They’re pretty special people, so it was cool to see them win a couple weeks ago in Vegas. I was really happy for them and Josh. They’re gonna keep at it and keep going because that’s how they do things.”
WHAT’S IT LIKE COMING BACK TO MARTINSVILLE KNOWING YOU’VE HAD SUCCESS? “It’s always nice to come back to places where you’ve run well. It gives you a little bit more of a sense of confidence like, ‘OK, I know what I need to be to be fairly decent here or contend for a top five or the win.’ It wasn’t always that way. I was terrible here my first two or three years at it and we worked really hard at figuring it out and it just kind of clicked one day and then it’s funny how those things stick with you. It’s like, ‘OK, this is the mindset I have to have coming into here,’ and it’s just kind of stuck. I do like coming here for multiple reasons. On track success is one thing. The other one is growing up not too far from here, so it does mean a lot, but it’s always nice when you come to places you’ve been good at and you just hope to keep that up. I don’t expect to run good here. You never know how years are gonna change or you try something that’s not gonna work. That stuff happens all the time, but it’s just a matter of your mindset going in. It makes you feel a little bit more at ease, but you’re never overconfident and like, ‘Oh, I’m for sure gonna run towards the front in this thing.’ You can’t really have that because you never know what’s gonna happen.”
WHAT’S ONE OF THE THINGS YOU LOVE ABOUT MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY THAT MAKES IT UNIQUE FROM ANY OTHER TRACK? “I think from the fan aspect side of it. I came here a lot as a kid and watching and it’s a fun atmosphere. I loved it so much as a kid because you could see everything. You can see no matter where you sit in the stands – you can see at least three quarters of the race track, so that was always unique to me and fun. There was always racing going on anywhere you looked. There was never a break in action. There were battles going on everywhere, so as a kid in the stands you’d just look around the racetrack. If the leader was two seconds ahead, well, you’re gonna have a battle for second or fifth or 10th or 20th. There’s always gonna be something going on that just kind of fascinated me, so it gave you a little bit of different snippets of the race that you could watch in the stands. I think that’s what makes it special for the fans to come out and watch, at least that’s what I took away from it as a kid and then the racing side is what it is. I love the racetrack. It puts on good shows and there’s no other place like it on our circuit. There are a lot of short tracks around the country like it in its own way, shaped like it but not necessarily races like it, but I think it just puts on a great race for fans and that’s why everyone here is very dedicated to Martinsville Speedway and I think you hear most of the drivers say they love it to just because of not only the history behind it, but the on track shows it puts on, too.”
