POCONO
Friday, June 20 — NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, 5 p.m. ET (FS1)
Saturday, June 21 — NASCAR Xfinity Series, 3:30 p.m. ET (CW)
Sunday, June 22 — NASCAR Cup Series, 2 p.m. ET (PRIME VIDEO)
NASCAR’s top three series will all be in action this weekend at Pocono Raceway with single events taking place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Ford is looking for repeat victories in the NASCAR Xfinity and NASCAR Cup Series after Cole Custer (NXS) and Ryan Blaney (Cup) pulled off wins a year ago.
BLANEY GOING FOR POCONO REPEAT
Ryan Blaney has a pair of NASCAR Cup Series wins at Pocono Raceway, including last year when he led a race-high 44 laps and won by 1.312 seconds over runner-up Denny Hamlin. It marked Ford’s sixth win in the last 10 races and was Blaney’s 12th career victory. Pocono is one of only three tracks where Blaney has registered multiple wins with the other two being Martinsville (two) and Talladega (three). He will be trying to become the first driver since Kyle Busch in 2017-18 to win back-to-back Cup races at the track known as The Tricky Triangle.
CUSTER POSTS FIRST HFT TOP 10
Cole Custer’s eighth place finish on Sunday in Mexico City was the best among Ford drivers and also marked the first top 10 run for the Haas Factory Team, which is in its first season after the changeover from Stewart-Haas Racing. Custer, who has 351 combined career starts in NASCAR’s top three series, heads to Pocono Raceway this weekend, where he has a pair of NASCAR Xfinity Series victories, including last season when he took the lead from Justin Allgaier and led the final nine laps.
FORD DRIVING 4 A DIFFERENCE STANDINGS
Pocono marks the final race in the Ford Driving 4 A Difference presented by the Gene Haas Foundation with Ford’s five NASCAR Xfinity Series drivers hoping to win as much as $20,000 for their charity of choice. The points each driver earns in races at Charlotte, Nashville, Mexico City, and Pocono will be added together with the winner being the one with the highest total. If a driver wins one of those events, their point total for that race is doubled.
Sheldon Creed (Friends of Jaclyn Foundation) — 112
Sam Mayer (Starkey Hearing Foundation) — 97
Harrison Burton (All Within My Hands) — 70
Ryan Sieg (Isabella Santos Foundation) — 57
Kyle Sieg (Motor Racing Outreach) — 25
BLANEY GETS FIRST CUP VICTORY
Ryan Blaney earned his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in 2017 at Pocono Raceway, giving the Wood Brothers their 99th all-time series win. Blaney held off Kevin Harvick over the final seven laps to win the Pocono 400 after overcoming a loose wheel only 19 laps into the event. He found himself in position to win after the caution came out with 19 laps to go. Kyle Busch opted to stay out while all of the other contenders behind him pitted, including Blaney who got four fresh tires and restarted fourth. A major battle between Busch and Blaney resulted, but the newer tires proved to be too much as Blaney eventually got by with nine laps to go. He couldn’t breathe easy, however, as Harvick started to reel him in. Despite closing the gap, Harvick could never pull alongside to challenge and Blaney took the checkered flag.
BUESCHER JOINS FIRST-TIME WINNERS CLUB AT POCONO
Chris Buescher is another Ford driver who posted his first NASCAR Cup Series win at Pocono when he won the rain-shortened Pennsylvania 400 in 2016. Buescher led the final 12 laps and qualified for the playoffs as the scheduled 160-lap race was called after 138 circuits. It represented the second series win and first playoff qualification for Front Row Motorsports, which Buescher drove for in 2016 after the organization entered into an alliance with what was then Roush Fenway Racing.
KULWICKI’S FINAL WIN
When Alan Kulwicki won the Champion Spark Plug 500 on June 14, 1992 it marked the final victory of his NASCAR Hall of Fame career. Kulwicki, who was voted into the Hall in 2019, passed Bill Elliott with 11 laps remaining to cap a day that saw 15 cars drop out before the checkered flag flew, including 11 engine failures. In a precursor to what happened a few months later at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Kulwicki and Elliott battled down the stretch as they exchanged the lead multiple times over the final 25 laps. Kulwicki passed Elliott for the top spot on lap 181, but traffic slowed him down to the point that five laps later the two swapped positions. Mark Martin made it a three-way battle, but Kulwicki ultimately prevailed as he got by both drivers on lap 190 and never looked back. Kulwicki, who won five series races overall, went on to win the championship later that year over fellow Ford drivers Elliott and Davey Allison.
FORD ALL-TIME POCONO WINS LEADER
The NASCAR Xfinity Series has been racing once a year at Pocono Raceway since 2016 and in that time Ford has won five times, which is the most for any manufacturer. Cole Custer has two of those victories while Brad Keselowski, Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe have one each. Ford’s Ryan Sieg has competed in all nine events and is coming off a 12th-place run last year, which tied his career best at the track. Overall, Chevrolet has three wins and Toyota one.
CHANDLER SMITH LEADING FORD
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series had last weekend off, but gets back in action on Friday at Pocono Raceway. With only five races remaining in the regular season, Ford’s Chandler Smith and his two wins are secure in making it to the postseason. He has one career win at Pocono and is currently second in the series point standings while three other F-150 drivers are also in the top 10. Smith’s teammate at Front Row Motorsports, Layne Riggs, is sixth while the ThorSport Racing duo of Ty Majeski (eighth) and Jake Garcia (ninth) round out the Ford foursome.
BLANEY MULTI-CLASS WINNER
As previously mentioned, Ryan Blaney earned his first Cup Series victory in 2017 at Pocono. He is also the only Ford driver to win in multiple classes at Pocono, as he earned his second career Truck Series victory there in 2013. Blaney overtook the field during a chaotic restart going into Turn 1 with two laps remaining and held on to take the checkered flag.
FORD’S NASCAR CUP SERIES WINNERS
AT POCONO
1985 – Bill Elliott (Sweep)
1988 – Bill Elliott (2)
1989 – Terry Labonte and Bill Elliott
1990 – Geoffrey Bodine (2)
1992 – Alan Kulwicki (1)
1994 – Rusty Wallace and Geoffrey Bodine
1995 – Dale Jarrett (2)
1996 – Rusty Wallace (2)
1997 – Dale Jarrett (2)
1998 – Jeremy Mayfield (1)
2000 – Jeremy Mayfield and Rusty Wallace
2001 – Ricky Rudd (1)
2002 – Dale Jarrett (1)
2005 – Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch
2008 – Carl Edwards (2)
2010 – Greg Biffle (2)
2016 – Chris Buescher (2)
2017 – Ryan Blaney (1)
2020 – Kevin Harvick (1)
2024 – Ryan Blaney
FORD’S NASCAR XFINITY SERIES WINNERS
AT POCONO
2017 – Brad Keselowski
2019 – Cole Custer
2020 – Chase Briscoe
2021 – Austin Cindric
2024 – Cole Custer
FORD’S NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES WINNERS AT POCONO
2013 – Ryan Blaney
The Ford Mustang, celebrating its 61st anniversary in 2025, is the world’s best selling sports car. It is also one of the planet’s most popular race cars. With Mustang-based race cars competing in international sports car competition (GT3 and GT4), NASCAR, NHRA, Formula Drift, in Australian Supercars, at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and in its own bespoke one-make series – Mustang Cup and Mustang Challenge – the platform has an unprecedented global reach. This weekend, 38 Mustang race cars are scheduled to race across all disciplines. Learn more at FordPerformance.com.
