Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Xfinity 500 — Martinsville Speedway
Sunday, October 26, 2025
Ford Finishing Results:
2nd – Ryan Blaney
6th – Ryan Preece
8th – Joey Logano
9th – Todd Gilliland
10th – Josh Berry
15th – Austin Cindric
17th – Cole Custer
20th – Brad Keselowski
25th – Zane Smith
29th – Chris Buescher
30th – Noah Gragson
32nd – Cody Ware
33rd – Casey Mears
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Discount Tire Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We just came up short. We did a good job and we got control of the race for a bit, but, gosh, his car was really fast. My rears started to go away pretty big on that long run and working through lap traffic he was able to get by me. Then he got control of the race from there and his car was really fast. I never really thought I had much for him, especially as I think it got cooler I feel like his car got even better, so he just had great rear drive and they were able to utilize it. I’m proud of our effort. I’m proud of coming from where we qualified and getting to lead and leading laps and had a shot at the win. It stinks to come up short, but I’m really proud of the effort and proud of our year.” DID THE MOVE HAD MADE TO PASS YOU THREE-WIDE SURPRISE YOU? “We were picking through lap traffic and it’s easy to kind of lose momentum and he saw an opportunity and took it. I don’t blame him. I know it was tight. I haven’t really seen a replay of how much room he had or not, I don’t really know, I just knew it was gonna be tight. I got the worst end of it, obviously, but it’s two guys racing for the win.” WHAT MORE DID YOU NEED? “I would say on the long run just rear drive. I kind of just lost rear drive on exit. His car held on pretty good. He made it tougher for me to work around lapped cars as I was losing the rear. I couldn’t really fade up and come down across, and he could do that pretty well. That’s kind of how I lost the lead. I slipped. I kind of got caught behind a lapper and he was able to take an opportunity to get underneath me, so I just lacked a little bit of rear grip there on that long run, where his car held on a little bit longer.” WHAT DID YOU MAKE OF THE BUMP? “Just tight racing. I knew it was gonna be three-wide. I was trying to protect. He was taking a run. I’d have done the same thing.” DID YOU KNOW YOU MIGHT BE IN TROUBLE IF IT WAS A LONG RUN? “I knew it was gonna be tough. It was kind of the game of like, ‘Alright, who can save a little bit more.’ The run before, that long one there, I started stage three when I was leading and I thought I had a pretty good rep of leading the race, setting the pace and seeing what I needed to save early to when I got to lap traffic I had some tire left to get around them. I tried to do the same thing, but William, honestly, had better pace than Denny, so I had to push a little bit more to keep him behind me, so that might have played a little factor. He was able to push me a little bit more and then I just got to lap traffic, and I knew I was slipping a little bit, but I thought I could maybe maintain and it was just who picked through lap traffic better and I just had one rough corner of getting bottled up behind somebody and was able to take the opportunity.” HOW HARD IS IT TO NOT WIN RUNNING AS WELL AS YOU DID? “It stinks, but, at the same time, I’m really proud of the effort we put in. From starting where we did, picking our way through the field as fast as we did early was really great. Going into this weekend, I just wanted a shot to win the race and we had that tonight and it just didn’t really play out. I know we gave 100 percent of what we had. Nobody left anything on the table with this group and that’s all you can ask for. That’s all you can do. The 24 was just a little better than us and they got the job done, so props to them, but, on our side, I’m just proud of the effort. We put up a good fight, but it just wasn’t quite enough.” ARE YOU SURPRISED THERE IS NO PENSKE FORD IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP 4? “Yes, because I expect at least one of us to be in there. It stinks. It stinks we don’t have a shot to go for four in a row for Roger. Roger was here tonight and was really wanting to see him in Victory Lane and celebrate it with him, but we just weren’t able to get it done and the championship streak at Penske ends. That’s the way it goes and we just have to re-rack and try to be better for next year. That’s all you can do.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We pitted in the middle of the second stage there coming to the end when everyone was flipping and all that stuff to the end of the second stage and, I don’t know, I feel like I lost control when the Hendrick cars pulled the okie dokie in front of me and I chose the inside lane, which put me third and that’s what let the 12 get up there and then you just kind of get stuck in dirty air. I’m kind of kicking myself on that decision, but, outside of that, we just weren’t fast enough. That’s the bottom line. We weren’t good enough to drive back through either way, but I thought I would have had a chance if maybe I could have made that better earlier in the race.” WHAT COULD YOU HAVE DONE BETTER DOWN THE STRETCH? “I just got out of the car. I have no idea. There will be plenty, obviously, looking back at it and things we’ve got to do better. Ultimately, we just have to be faster. That’s the biggest thing.” A TEAM PENSKE FORD HAS BEEN IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP 4 THE LAST THREE YEARS AND YOU’VE WON. HOW DISAPPOINTING THERE WON’T BE ONE THIS YEAR? “Bummed. I don’t know if there’s another word for it. I’m just bummed that one of us didn’t make it. Everyone works hard enough to deserve to be there. We just couldn’t get the job done today, or really the last three races. That’s what it comes down to. The four there deserve to be there. That’s how I always look at it and this year we didn’t deserve to be there.” YOU AND BELL PUT ON TIRES AND IT SEEMED YOU HAD A HARDER TIME PICKING YOUR WAY THROUGH THE FIELD. DID THE TRACK COOL OFF OR SOMETHING? “Yeah, I don’t know. It seemed like right at the end of that run, the top five cars started tanking, but it just kind of seems like the tires would fall off and then they’d kind of maintain for a while, and then they’d run out of rubber and they would fall off huge. They’d tank and by the time we passed a couple cars and you use up a lot of tire to pass cars, and then everyone is the same speed and then they started tanking right at the end, and then the caution came out. You’ve got to do something different. You can’t do the same.” WAS THERE ANY TALK ABOUT THROWING HAIL MARY AND STAYING OUT? “We would have got killed if we stayed out. That many laps on your tires there’s no chance. We’re the team to do things, but that wouldn’t even make sense. You could almost argue two tires there. It would have been close, but we were almost too far back and couldn’t close up enough to even get to the lead. You’ve got to have the lead if you put two tires on and your only hope at that point is everyone wrecks each other and it becomes a demolition derby behind you. That’s the only hope, but we were just too far back. We just couldn’t close the gap and, like I said, just wasn’t good enough.” YOU KNOW THE HIGHS, BUT THIS HAS TO BE A LOW, RIGHT? “It’s a bummer. There’s no Ford. There’s no Team Penske car in the Championship 4. We weren’t good enough. That’s all there is to it. It’s not from a lack of effort. We just weren’t good enough.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Castrol/TravelCenters of America Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Our Ford Mustang was really good. I felt like from the drop of the green between managing the plan we had, we just had a really good race car and it was kind of surprising to me. From there, it was fun to use tools that you learn growing up in racing – how to manage tires and take care of them and do the things that you need to do to keep them on it, so I had a lot of fun today.” YOU WERE COMING TO THE FRONT LATE WITH THE 12 AND 24 BATTLING. DID THE CAUTIONS HAMPER YOUR ADVANCE? “We had a bad pit stop. We were third and came out ninth, but I was gonna be good those last 30 laps and I’m not entirely sure how they would have been. I took care of my tires to make sure that knowing it was 100-and-however many laps that we needed to be good at the end. It’s a lot easier to pass cars at the end of a run than it is at the beginning, so there were definitely points during the race when we were really good in the long run and it crossed my mind that we could definitely win today.”
