Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Goodyear 400 Media Availability — Darlington Raceway
Saturday, March 21, 2026
RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Fifth Third Bank Racing Ford Mustang Dark Horse, and Ryan Preece, driver of the No. 60 Kroger/Oscar Mayer/Heinz Ford Mustang Dark Horse, came into the Darlington Raceway infield media center before practice to talk about this weekend’s race.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fifth Third Bank Ford Mustang Dark Horse – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHY THIS COULD BE A DIFFICULT RACE? “I think looking at it, maybe it’s because I’m just not as prepared as Preece, showing up in a firesuit a couple of hours early here. I think we look at this racetrack, whether it’s been in year’s past, the fall off, the surface, how it’s aged, this was a higher fall off racetrack before we started talking about higher fall off tires, so it’s already been well on its way. Now, with the tire we’re able to successfully run here for probably a year now or so and what Goodyear has done on that side of things has really helped improve the racing, and then to come here with more power and significantly less downforce, I just feel like we’re going to be out of control, and I think you’re going to be screaming and wanting tires way more than we’ll physically be able put them on. I hope that the passing opportunities go up. If somebody is really struggling, we’ve got a couple of different lanes to look for for fresh racetrack and I hope it makes great racing. I know we’ll have a lot more questions than answers, but I’m real excited to fire up in practice and see what that brings, and especially the race.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Kroger/Oscar Mayer/Heinz Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “I think we’re heading in the direction of what a lot of us drivers have been talking about for years and that’s if there’s a caution, you know, four or five laps, and I’m talking outside of just Darlington, you didn’t want to see guys stay out for track position and be rewarded for it. You want to see the guys that decide to give up track position come down for tires and make their way through the field, much like we saw Corey Heim do that last night. I mean, how exciting was that for two laps? You had guys that stayed out because they didn’t have anymore tires, and you had a guy that had, I don’t know how many laps those scuffs had on them – five laps – and boy it looked like he was Superman. That’s the type of racing I want to see – less downforce, the more horsepower and heading in this direction is what I’ve been beating the drum on for years. It’s nice that it’s happening and you guys are gonna have quite the show for it. I’m definitely excited about this weekend, just like Chris said. There’s a lot of questions that will be answered here in about an hour or so – what kind of understanding of what balance we’ll be projecting – which one is right and which one is gonna need some work on for tomorrow – but I certainly feel like our RFK cars are gonna be fast. Our Oscar Mayer Ford Mustang Dark Horse is gonna be fast as well.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED – IS THE ADDITIONAL HORSEPOWER GOING TO CHANGE THE RACING DYNAMIC? “It will probably just an exponent on it would be the prediction because you’ve had a certain amount of understanding how hard you can push here in the past already, so this is not completely new to us. It’s just the extent of what we feel like we’re gonna fight, so I don’t think that it changes who comes out here and gets it right. I think that it’s gonna take some time in practice to figure out what that looks like – how much can you really gain on the tail end of the run by giving up a little bit early. I think that’s the bigger question. We talk about track position and it’s a couple of things that we hate to hear in these rooms is track position and aero and dirty air and all these things, so we have these conversations because track position matters because it was so hard to pass. If the fall off is as significant as we feel it is, can you from behind the wheel make a difference to where when we get 20 or 30 laps into a run come charging through there because you’ve taken care of your stuff more and I think that’s what we predict we’ll see. I can’t answer a whole lot of questions with accuracy yet, but I think it’s just going to put an exponent on it.”
WHERE IS THE LINE ON TAKING THE GAMBLE OF TRYING TO HOLD YOUR STUFF BACK, BUT IN DOING THAT IT COULD PUT YOU FURTHER BEHIND? “I’m glad I’m not a crew chief this weekend. Let’s put it that way. I don’t want to have to make that decision and have to live with the consequences if it doesn’t go the right way. That being said, I’m putting a lot of pressure on Scott (Graves) and Derrick (Finley), but it’s gonna matter at some point. Somebody is gonna get it right and somebody is gonna get it wrong, but at the end of the day I think it’s just a calculated risk that you take. I can’t say what the right answer is right now, but as the race plays out, that’s why those guys have gotten to where they are and why they’re so good at it is trying to read the vibe. I think Jeremy Bullins said ‘the vibe of the race’ last year at some point. I didn’t see that one coming from him, but read the vibe of the race and figure out if you feel like setting something back is gonna be the right play and if it doesn’t and everybody else puts stickers on one more time than you coming down to the checkered flag, you’re gonna pay a price for that. You’re going to lose a significant amount of time somewhere in that entire cycle, but it can certainly make someone look like a hero at the end too. It’s risk versus reward, just like always. It just might look more dramatic here.”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE CAR TOMORROW HOW WILL YOU DECIDE IF IT WAS A GOOD RACE FOR YOU, THE DRIVER? “Chris was just talking about how you attack the beginning of the runs versus the ends of the runs and, to be honest with you, I saw even at Vegas that’s not notoriously known as a track that is gonna wear tires out and you’re gonna see comers and goers and late in runs there were guys that I saw in the first 10-12-15 laps that they would go really, really hard and be really, really fast, but after 15-16 laps, they were holding on and coming back. The guy that chose to take care of them a little more, you saw them go forward. I know there was a pack of us that on a 35-lap run it was a handful at Las Vegas. So now we’re at Darlington that is known for wearing tires out, that is known for seeing race cars jumping and chasing around, so I think, like Chris was saying, how you choose to keep track position or say, ‘Hey, you go ahead and burn this up. I’m gonna see you in 10-15 laps. I’m excited to see that, so when I get out of the race car and I look back and say, ‘OK, I was able to be disciplined and then reap the rewards. That will kind of be the point where I get out and say, ‘OK, we’re hitting it here. We’re figuring it all out.’ But, yeah, I guess you’ll have to check back after the race.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED – WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CONVINCE YOU TO DO THE VIDEOS YOU’VE BEEN DOING LATELY FOR SPONSORS? “For us, that stuff is separate from the DAP program. That’s our partners and, honestly, it’s them saying we want to invest in NASCAR and in RFK Racing and we want this to be what people think about when they see our brand. Trimble being the most recent one. I think that I pretty much about my entire life just being told where to go and when, so when stuff like that comes up it’s something you don’t know much about until you roll in there and everyone starts talking and figuring out what we’re gonna do and then it’s just a matter of having fun with it and playing off of it. For us, you think about NASCAR 20 years ago and those more fan-facing interactions or commercials or stand up, whatever it may be, and we’ve been really fortunate to have partners that have bought into that. With the Trimble video. With the Consumer Cellular video. The amount of times I get told to Shut Up, Chris walking through the garage every single weekend is a lot higher than it used to be, I’ll say that. That’s great for us. That’s a way for us to have a little fun and for our partners to get just a little bit more out of the sport that we love to come and participate in every weekend. Hat’s off to our groups that have said, ‘We’re gonna commit to this. We’re gonna have fun and show everybody that NASCAR is where we want to be and RFK Racing. This is our group of people and this is how we’re gonna promote our brand.’”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CONVINCE YOU TO DO THE VIDEOS YOU’VE BEEN DOING LATELY FOR SPONSORS? “What you see on camera is very much natural. That’s how Chris and I are, and Brad. It’s just we’re not on Instagram videos and all that stuff at points during the day. I feel like, for us, when we have Trimble productions or Kroger productions or some of those other ones, it’s kind of how we are in those environments. They’ve very natural.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED – IN TERMS OF THE PEOPLE THAT WERE AT JACK’S RECOGNITION ON TUESDAY, WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT STAND OUT THE MOST? “I’ve been at RFK, I signed up when I was almost 16 years old. I’m 33 now, so I’ve seen a lot of things and I’ve heard a lot of things. I’ve been a fly on the wall in a lot of meetings and it was funny to me, I’ll start with this story. Tuesdays used to be the meetings. They’re not now. They’re Mondays, but Tuesday used to be the post-race meeting and that was the five Roush Cup cars, that was the Petty Motorsports cars, it was a meeting that took two or three hours to get through and they were a little harsh. Jack has an iron fist and it was scary. Let me tell you, as a 16-year-old sitting in the meeting listening to heroes of mine that are hall of famers now getting chewed out like that, I couldn’t imagine what was gonna happen to me when I screwed up. Every driver that was there had some comment about how rough some of their Tuesdays went, but the neat part about that was every driver had also won races under that roof and those were great Tuesdays. This was probably the best Tuesday that all of the drivers collectively had ever had at RFK. There were some scary moments. You didn’t want to have to go first and explain why you sped on pit road, wrecked the race car in qualifying, gave something away in the closing laps. You didn’t want to be there, but this was not that atmosphere. This was stories of the fun times. Jack was grinning from ear to ear and just kind of going through what he’s meant to all of our careers. I think it was Mark who said it best. He stood up at the end and said that everybody sitting at those tables that has gotten to drive Cup cars and win races for RFK were developed and built out of those walls – that everybody got their start because Jack was willing to take a chance and put the development work in. You’ve not seen that consistently through this garage area across the board. It’s not been the standard operating procedure of any other team, and I think that’s really important to get across for Jack’s legacy is that he took chances on people, found them from other series – I didn’t have the credentials to walk into Roush and try and act like I could go drive a Cup car that day, but Jack took a chance, gave me the tools and the people and the resources to go figure it out and figure out how to win at the highest level in motorsports. It’s important to know that that is the side of Jack’s legacy that everybody hears the most because it is so rewarding to think about all of the times that were tough, but also the times that were great. That was the best Tuesday within those walls that I think most of us can remember.”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – IN TERMS OF THE PEOPLE THAT WERE AT JACK’S RECOGNITION ON TUESDAY, WHAT ARE THE THINGS THAT STAND OUT THE MOST? “For me, it was sitting around Carl Edwards, Mark Martin, Jamie McMurray, Jeff Burton and as race car drivers now we grew up watching those guys, so they are all hall of famers and have a level of respect. Where I come from in the northeast, we respected people like them and the ones you race against, so sitting at the same table and hearing some of those stories and hearing Mark and Carl talk about them was really eye-opening and fun. It makes you definitely appreciate the opportunity that I have as well as being there now and being there to honor Jack. I grew up and my family and my father loved Fords, so I grew up driving Fords and Jack Roush has a rich history with Ford and to be there where RFK honored him and NASCAR has honored him twice is a big deal and it was great to be a part of.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED –BRAD WILL BE MAKING HIS 600TH START AT MARTINSVILLE. WHAT HAS HE MEANT TO THE SPORT? “I would say that I will just speak to the most recent interaction with Brad and kind of what that means to me. Obviously, he’s been in this sport a really long time and is a champion of our sport. He’s a future hall of famer of our sport, so when you think about those years, think about watching him as a kid growing up while I was racing Legends cars or ARCA or whatever it may have been, I guess I have to admit at some point that I was under the RFK banner when the Carl and Brad feud was going on and I guess I wasn’t really on Brad’s side at that point, but we haven’t had that discussion in person. But thinking about now and what Brad has done coming over, diving off into the ownership role as well as a driver and a teammate, it has been the most unique way to talk about race cars to your ownership because anything that we are experiencing in our race car or anything that we want to be better, he’s living it at the same time. He wants that to be better. He wants our cars to turn better in the middle and he wants the rear to be planted in the racetrack. He understands exactly where we’re coming from. It’s not going to somebody that is trying to guess where our head space is at and it’s created this more direct and efficient line to making better race cars quicker. That’s come from him saying, one, I want to be a race car driver. I want to be a winning NASCAR Cup driver. I want to be a multiple champion of our sport, but I also want to be a team owner. I want to have say in how a race team can develop and get better, and I give him tons of credit because I want nothing to do with team ownership. I have watched him run circles around us just back and forth through the shop non-stop. The amount of stuff he goes through to try and make that work, we owe him a ton of credit and probably more than he gets because it’s exhausting watching him. I can’t imagine trying to live that life the same way, so it’s showed me how it’s all progressing and ultimately how it’s helping us be able to fine-tune and have our race cars faster than you would in a different scenario.”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – “The way I look at it is that Chris has been here at RFK since you were 16-17, so you’ve seen all sides of it. You saw pre-Next Gen era, then you saw Next Gen era where Brad came in and what I came into was an already block solid foundation between Chris doing a lot of simulator work, trying to build up credibility and making sure that our cars showed up fast week in and week out, and then I see Brad preaching the performance and constantly trying to make it so we can drive fast cars faster. That’s very important in our job, so I came into this organization where the foundation was already really solid and now it’s trying to go from where you guys are winning a couple races a year like what Brad wants to do – he wants to win five-plus races this year between all of us, so that’s the goal and constantly trying to put boundaries and be faster and make cars faster and that’s much like what Chris just said. I can appreciate him running around between buildings making sure that every side of RFK is heading in the right direction to give us opportunities to win races, whether it be the pit crew, the cars, sponsors, we are trying to win in all aspects.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED – HOW IMPORTANT WAS IT TO YOU GUYS TO DO A BIFFLE THROWBACK SCHEME THIS WEEKEND? “It’s not the Throwback Weekend for the first time in a long time, but, obviously, with the tragedy through the offseason and what Greg Biffle and his family meant to RFK and Jack and this sport, for us to be able to pull us together and everybody back in our shop to make this happen to where we are all able to run the legendary 16 stylized font and run some form of a throwback for our partners to sign up to do that because I know that’s always the discussion of it takes away from the brand identity. Fifth Third signed up and jumped at the opportunity to do it and that means a lot to me personally, to Jack and to RFK as a whole because it’s just a way to remember Greg and everything that he accomplished for RFK Racing through the years. It’s hard to put together, but it’s a neat way for us to be able to kind of carry that remembrance throughout the season and just in a bigger way for this weekend.”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – “For me, Jack Roush had a lot of really memorable paint schemes. One of them was Greg Biffle’s No. 16 3M paint scheme and mine – the red, the black, the yellow, the white – it all stands out. I had two occasions where I interacted with Greg. One was a couple years ago at my race shop that I rented from David Ragan. He just happened to be around there and was talking with him, and then the other time was racing last year in the Crown Vics at Stafford and banging doors with him. What I learned that day is those guys have a good time. They knew how to have a good time and I respected him as a race car driver, so RFK jumped at the opportunity to be able to do this and hopefully we can all have some really strong runs in his honor.”
