Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Bristol Midweek Media Availability
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Zane Smith, driver of the No. 38 Aaron’s Rent to Own Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Front Row Motorsports, is coming off a 12th-place finish last week at Darlington Raceway. He spoke about the start to his first NASCAR Cup Series season with FRM and what to expect this weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
ZANE SMITH, No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU’VE BEEN ABOUT A NINTH TO 12TH PLACE CAR FOR MUCH OF THE YEAR. WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO TAKE THAT NEXT STEP AND BREAK INTO THE TOP 10? “I feel pretty good about how things have been going. I wish our races could be a little bit smoother. I feel we’ll maybe start the first stage and be really strong and then it’s like an unlucky caution will fall and we get put back and then have to battle our way forward. It would be a lot less work if we could just stay up there, but all in all we’re bringing good speed, making positive adjustments and having fun doing it, so I’m excited for this weekend to hopefully continue it.”
GOING FROM SPIRE TO FRONT ROW, DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE ANY NOTEBOOK AT ALL OR ARE YOU STARTING OFF TOTALLY NEW AGAIN? “Yeah, I mean the experience that I got last year with a full year of Cup I feel like you learn so much. That’s definitely the main positive takeaway. Last year, I was in a very unique and weird situation where I was kind of a part of two teams, so it’s been nice to have more of a normal deal I guess you could say for this year. It’s been fun. It’s been a really great group to work with and I feel like we’re getting better every weekend. We’re bringing positive speed and making positive adjustments, so we just need a few things to go our way and I feel like we’ll kick into that next bracket and hopefully compete for a win.”
YOU ARE THREE POINTS OUT OF THE TOP 20. WOULD FINISHING IN THE TOP 20 THIS SEASON BE RELATIVELY SATISFACTORY? “Yeah. I mean, I think how we’re running is a positive. I think there there have been a handful of races where we deserved to be in that top 10, but just a few things maybe didn’t go our way. I believe we should be finishing there and it would be great to make the playoffs, so obviously I want to stay in that top 20. I really want to get a race win and say I’ve won on Sunday, so that’s the main goal this year.”
WHERE DO YOU FEEL YOUR TEAM IS GOING INTO THIS WEEKEND AND TRYING TO IMPROVE YOUR QUALIFYING ORDER? “I think every single weekend track position is literally everything, and I feel it once again showed this weekend. There were cars that finished in the top 10 that lost the track position and really couldn’t get a handle on their car, and then once that caution favored them, they were able to stay up there. It’s crazy with just how close everyone is on Sunday, but executing on Saturdays and making sure you have a good practice knowing what you need in the race, and of course qualifying well to give you that better pit stall selection and putting yourself in contention to hopefully score stage points. Your car just drives so much better up there, so everyone is fighting for it, everyone is on the same page, but it’s easier said than done.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL YOUR TEAM IS GOING INTO WEEK NINE? “To answer that honestly, I thought going into this year it was gonna take a few weekends to get us to start hitting our stride, but I feel we unloaded at Daytona and it’s a little bit of a different weekend, but we had a lot of speed down there as Front Row has shown in the past, and then we started getting into these weekends and I feel we’re unloading really close and even if we are just a little bit off, we have been making positive adjustments, where my car just really wakes up on Sunday. That’s just the main positive takeaway of where I’m just really proud of this whole group. Looking back, there’s one race I would say that kind of stands out – COTA, I guess, on road courses. Road Courses have been a strong suit for me in the past and we just kind of missed it at COTA in general, so that’s something to build off there. I feel our short track stuff has been really strong and we know a direction we need to head to get better, and then Vegas we qualified good in ninth, raced OK, but I felt the adjustments we made going into Homestead, which was obviously our second mile and a half, it really just woke our car up in a direction that I really liked, so hopefully we keep figuring out things here and there to adjust off of that and go into these mile and a halves that are coming up, but I feel pretty strong about everything. We just need to clean up maybe our road course stuff some, but I feel confident in myself in knowing what I want there and hopefully we can find that.”
YOU’VE FINISHED ON THE LEAD LAP OF ALL BUT ONE RACE THIS YEAR. WHAT DO YOU ATTRIBUTE THAT SUCCESS TO? “I think this started late last year after Nashville, and I was kind of officially let go and figuring out what I was gonna do next year, and we were just having conversations. It was like, ‘Hey, let’s take our small wins. Let’s try to stay on the lead lap,’ which Bristol was one of them. Bristol is so hard to stay on the lead lap and if you do in that first stage, Martinsville is one that kind of comes to mind, your whole entire day looks so much different. You get to pit with the leaders and maybe if something happens like Martinsville this year for us. We raced well all race long, got caught up with the 54 in a late-race accident and typically you’d have to start at the tail or you’re buried and then it’s super easy to go a lap down. Well, for us, from staying on the lead lap we were able to restart 19th or something like that. Just little positive takeaways. I really started to just focus in on executing on Saturday. That’s something I paid attention to a lot during the offseason, figuring out how to qualify better just to get that better pit pick. It’s easier on your pit crew and you have track position. Like I said, the cars drive so much better the closer you get to the front, so this past weekend was a perfect example of that. Once we were in the top eight for a majority of the first half of the race, there really weren’t many complaints with my car, just a few things here and there, and then as soon as you get put in 20th everything is wrong with the car. I don’t even know if I gave feedback because I know it’s not accurate. It’s not real, so you just kind of have to figure out how to pick them off one at a time and try to execute things that you can control. Pit road is one of them. Everyone is so good at the small things on Sunday, so focusing on those small things is just some attention I put on during the offseason.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY TRACKS COMING UP ON YOUR CALENDAR THAT MIGHT PROVIDE A CHANCE TO WIN? “Last year, I would say any of the road courses, just because I really enjoy the road courses in this car. I don’t know if I would answer that right now. I want to see us have a good road course race. Our road course stuff at COTA, which was really our only tell so far this year, just wasn’t good for us, so we need to figure out some of that, but I feel confident that we can get there sooner rather than later and hopefully execute a win there. But, really, any of them. We’ve had an assortment of different races this year and I feel we’ve shown speed in all of them. I love mile and a halves. Our short track stuff has been strong and, of course, the speed the Fords always bring on the superspeedways is always a confidence booster, so I feel good about all of them.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT TALLADEGA IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS AND JUST MAKING SURE YOU’RE AROUND AT THE END OF THE RACE? “We’re definitely gonna have our meeting and go over what we can control on the superspeedway side of things with our teammates and Front Row now having three cars and the speed that they bring, and then of course the Penske cars that stand out. Pretty much everybody at RFK is really strong too on a superspeedway, so there should be no reason why we can’t control the race and that’s all we can control. There’s nothing you can do about the big one, so that’s always gonna happen, but trying to survive through that and find yourself in the first couple of rows is really all you can ask for.”
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE PROCESS OF CHASING THE TRACK AT BRISTOL? THE CONDITIONS SEEM TO CHANGE AND GUYS HAVE TO MOVE AROUND. WHAT IS THAT LIKE? “I think, first off to answer that, is I think being in Group B in practice is always gonna help that, and we’ve been fortunate enough to be in that, so that’s a positive. The PJ1 on the bottom is always gonna have grip once it’s activated, but then you see 25-30 laps into a run that top lane really coming into play and they’re pretty even at that time, so then it becomes a clean air game of whichever lane is kind of open. The track does go through changes a lot. Bristol is very unique with very temperature sensitive. I know this weekend is gonna be cold and I know that race where we had all the rubber build-up, I think it was a different compound that was laid down with resin, but it was a cold race, so you don’t really know what to expect. You know though, for the most part, that the top lane is going to come in at some point and I feel you need to practice that at some point in practice to see what you have up there, and once the PJ1 is activated it’s kind of acts like a slot car. That’s what it feels like. It feels really fast. You get in a rhythm there where you’re just kind of clicking off laps and everything feels the same in my past, but the track goes through changes where the PJ1 might be more activated and we eventually towards the end of the race pick it up and it becomes a lot of rubber laid down down there and it becomes pretty sketchy. I have some attention of how I want my car to feel in that top lane. I was able to learn a few things during the second Bristol last year that I hopefully will be able to apply to this year, that I felt were some major positives, so hopefully we qualify well and just have a solid day.”
YOU WORKED WITH RYAN BERGENTY BRIEFLY BEFORE THIS YEAR. HOW HAS THAT PROCESS GONE WITH YOUR COMMUNICATION TO MAKE THOSE RIGHT ADJUSTMENTS YOU’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT? “It’s been awesome working with Ryan. I just feel our communication is where it needs to be. We just get on the same page fairly quickly and I pretty instantly know what he wants to know from me and the feedback that I need to give home so he can go down the direction of where he feels the adjustment is going to make the most difference. It might be hard to explain or understand, and I think we do a really good job of we get caught up in this SMT game, where the data may look like one thing, but my comments may look like another, and I feel that he has a really good balance of that. I feel positive about all of that and, like I said, when we’re a little off, I sleep good on Saturday nights knowing that we’re gonna make some positive adjustments and having that confidence, I think, goes a long way.”
IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT MAKES FOR A GOOD SPOTTER? AND AT A TRACK LIKE TALLADEGA WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THERE FROM YOUR SPOTTER? “I think trust is a big thing. This is a new spotter than I’ve had pretty much throughout my whole career in Ryan Blanchard. He’s done a great job this year. He’s probably one of the youngest spotters up there. He’s 22, but he’s raced his whole life, so I feel the information he gives me has been great. Obviously, we’ve only had one superspeedway together at Daytona and I felt we worked really well together, we just got caught up in superspeedway things. I’m excited to get to work with him there, where the spotters really get to shine and hopefully we have some good superspeedways. We know we’ll have the speed to do it.”
IS THERE A MOMENT IN YOUR CAREER WHERE YOU CAN POINT TO YOUR SPOTTER SPECIFICALLY HELPING YOU IN THAT INSTANCE? “For sure. These cars, especially the Cup car, they’re tight spaces and you can only see so far ahead, so when something happens, maybe with a lapper or the leaders, by the time you see it they’re about in your windshield, so trying to give you a heads-up on that stuff is always good to have, but there have been countless times, not only with Ryan but my past spotters where they’ve been able to call that and they allowed me to live to fight another day.”
