Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Cook Out Southern 500
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Ford Unofficial Finishing Results:
10th – Chris Buescher
12th – Austin Cindric
13th – Zane Smith
14th – Noah Gragson
15th – Brad Keselowski
16th – Ryan Preece
18th – Ryan Blaney
20th – Joey Logano
24th – Cole Custer
26th – Todd Gilliland
35th – Timmy Hill
37th – Cody Ware
38th – Josh Berry
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We had a decent start to the evening, but got behind a little bit in stage two. We had a bad stop and kind of got ping ponged around on a few of the restarts. Brian and the guys made some good adjustments, called great strategy throughout the whole race and had the car rolling pretty well at the end. It’s a solid finish. We were able to get some stage points and obviously others had a lot of issues, so I’m proud of the effort but it’s still nothing to make you feel safe. You’ve still got to go execute like this for two more races. It’s easier said than done.” THOUGHTS ON GOING TO GATEWAY NEXT WEEK, WHERE YOU ARE THE DEFENDING WINNER. “We’re hoping to have a bit more contending speed next week. I thought we were super solid and properly executed the finish today, but we’re gonna keep needing to get more if we want to keep advancing forward.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Dutch Boy Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “There were multiple instances, one on pit road. We had to start in the back and then getting spun off turn four killed the splitter, and then we came from the back to 19th and then the caution came out as soon as we got to pit road and sent us all the way back again. Just about everything that could go wrong tonight went wrong. At least we recovered to where we did, which is OK I guess. It just wasn’t a smooth night.” IT SEEMS EVERY YEAR THIS FIRST PLAYOFF RACE CREATES ISSUES FOR THE PLAYOFF CONTENDERS. ANYTHING YOU CAN POINT TO? “I have no idea. Everything that happened to us tonight was somebody else’s fault, so I don’t know. Maybe they’ve got to figure it out a little better.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We just had no grip. There isn’t much to say outside of that. It wasn’t good enough. This has been a good track for us in the past, but I don’t know. Some of our cars were decent at times, but not like we have been here. It’s a bit of a head scratcher to try to understand. I don’t know where we are in points, but it’s obviously not the day we wanted. We just did a good job of not making a bad day worse.” HOW WAS SURPRISING WAS IT TO HAVE THAT RESULT? “Yeah, it was surprising. I thought we would be able to run in the top 10, just because off of history and because we’ve been there in the past, but when everyone got better we didn’t.”
JOSH BERRY, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT HAPPENED ON LAP ONE? “It’s kind of hard to even really know, but it the car bottomed out five or six times and just wrecked. It was definitely unexpected. We didn’t really fight that too bad in practice. I saw a replay of it when I was sitting in the car while they were fixing it from the 1, and you could tell that it bottomed out four or five times and you can’t save them when they’re like that.” HOW DESPERATE DO YOU FEEL GOING INTO GATEWAY AND BRISTOL? “It’s just disappointing. It looked like a lot of people had a bad night, which we know how this goes. We just need to avoid a bad night. I obviously haven’t seen it yet, but I feel like we’re still within striking distance that if we just go have two good weeks, we’ll at least be in the mix once we get to Bristol.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 BuildSubmarines.com Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We had really good long run speed. Our short run was just kind of eh. We needed all 500 miles today, that’s for sure. We passed some cars there towards the end and got ourselves a solid finish, but we want to be a little better.”
