Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Coke Zero Sugar 400 Media Availability — Daytona International Speedway
Friday, August 28, 2026
The RFK Racing trio of Brad Keselowski, Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece stopped by the Daytona International Speedway infield media center before qualifying this afternoon to talk about their respective Chase scenarios. A complete transcript of that Q&A session follows:
BRAD KESELOWSKI, No. 6 Consumer Cellular Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU TECHNICALLY HAVE A CHANCE STILL, SO WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET KNOWING RYAN IS IN CONTENTION AS WELL? “I think there are three scenarios we see at RFK and, obviously, with Chris being here, four, which is one car is locked in. My car needs a miracle and then there’s Ryan’s position in driver points and Ryan’s position in owner’s points. Those are the four different ways I look at this. Ryan’s position in owner’s points is really close and, ultimately, that’s how the money is paid out, so wearing my owner hat, we’re paying a lot of attention to that. And driver points is not as close, but still close enough with a great day that he could point his way into it, so it’s really important for us that we put our best foot forward. Chris, having nothing to really lose in this race, although an opportunity to move up a few spots in points, myself needing a lot of help to get anywhere, and then Ryan just needing probably to have a solid day to get us in in owner’s points and a pretty good day to get us in with his driver’s points, and I think that’s kind of the way I see it right now.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Kroger/OIKOS Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT IS YOUR FOCUS FOR YOU GOING IN? “Be on offense. Brad pretty much explained it to you guys – the driver’s and the owner’s side – but, for me, when I come into this weekend I just think about trying to win stages and win the race. That ultimately, no matter what situation it is, we would get our way into the playoffs, so, selfishly, I’d like to be in on the driver’s side, but I am fully aware, and I’ve been in the car owner points race before. Ultimately, I would love to get both in. I completely understand the situation and know that having a great day will get us in on the owner’s side, but the goal going into it before everything starts is to try and do both. There’s a lot of unknowns right now, so just trying to be as prepared as possible.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – THE HOUSTON TEXANS CAME TO RFK ON THURSDAY. WERE YOU THERE AND WAS THAT HARD FOR YOU WITH BEING A LIONS FAN? “I would say that, one, no we were not there. We had an event with our friends at Ford for all three of us drivers, so we weren’t able to attend, but I think RFK has made a big effort this year to engage more in hospitality and unique opportunities. The Houston Texas, I believe, were in town for a preseason game against the Panthers, so looking for those opportunities to do things that are fun for our people and fun for the fans of our sport and both sports – football and NASCAR. So, those kind of crossover opportunities are kind of the high tides that I think can lift all ships. It looked like they had a lot of fun from the videos I saw, and I was glad to see that, and then somewhat selfishly we’re always hopeful that there’s somebody on that team that sends a message to the next elite athlete as we look to the future of where our sport is going on pit road, that’s critical to our health is continuing to recruit those personnel. It’s a fun thing to do. No, I didn’t have any issues with bringing in someone from the Texans. I’m not a hater. And I will say that in full credit, when we re-did our human performance facility, we did get a lot of help from the current Lions GM at the time and that was great, so there’s some good relationships there.”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – HOW COULD THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF THE PACKAGE AFFECT THE MINDSET THIS WEEKEND? “I feel like, Brad you’re probably gonna give a really good answer on this and, to me, it’s try and win. No matter what. Every time, whether it’s Xfinity, Trucks, Cup, you think about Daytona, Talladega as anyone’s game. There’s a lot of strategy. Brad’s done a really good job when it’s come to getting out front, leading lanes and doing all of those things right, and you’ve got to have some luck on your side, but, for me, the mindset is win. The mindset is be the guy up front controlling lanes or pushing. That’s all you can do because you can get wrecked leading or you can get wrecked riding in 30th. I’ve had both happen, so I’d rather be the one that’s trying to lead the race and not playing defense.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – WITH IT BEING LIKELY ONE OR TWO CARS GET IN, TO WHAT DEGREE AT THAT POINT DOES THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION START TO LOOK AT IT AS DEVOTING RESOURCES AND EFFORT TOWARD THE ONE OR TWO CARS THAT HAVE A PATH TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “I would probably first start by answering that with we have commitments for all three teams that we have to honor, and we have to put our best foot forward. The idea that we’re gonna strip players from one to help another doesn’t really sit all that well. That said, I think Chris’ team is very strong and there’s not really a reason to do that anyway, so that’s kind of the way I look at that. Ultimately, if our cars don’t make it, if the other two cars don’t make it outside of Chris, then we still expect him to go out and compete for race wins, and I don’t think that changes at all. Obviously, we still want to see the 17 car and Chris’ team have their best opportunity, but I don’t think there’s anything that stands out right now as a limiting factor to do that, that we have the ability to move around.”
RYAN PREECE CONTINUED – THE POLE IS THE GOAL TODAY. WITH THIS DIFFERENT PACKAGE, THOUGH, HAVE YOU SIMULATED IT? WILL YOU FEEL ANY DIFFERENCE TODAY IN QUALIFYING? “I hope not. I hope I can just hold a pretty wheel and we can put it on the pole. That would be ideal. In the past, I think stage one has always been a question for a lot of us because of fuel mileage and all those other things, where it feels like stage one is pretty straightforward now, so if you are in control of the race, it’s ideal to not give it up and if you’re on the pole, I shouldn’t say it’s necessarily easy to win that stage, but it’s yours to give away. I’m sure that’s a strong statement, but I believe in it.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fifth Third Bank Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT RACES ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE CHASE? “I was thinking late or not it didn’t matter if I was here. This has been easy. Darlington. From the get-go, Darlington has been a race that we’ve all run really well at and been in contention to fight for wins. Brad’s win there was not long ago. It’s a racetrack that I’ve always loved. It’s been one of my favorite racetracks. I tell people a lot that we always like the places that we run good at. I’ve liked Darlington even when I didn’t run good at that place, so I think that does say something for that facility, so right off the bat we’re gonna say that’s one we’ve got a great shot at. Really, when you look at the races remaining, including this one here tomorrow night, we have a lot of really good racetracks for our organization. I would say that we’ve got our mile-and-a-half has been extremely strong so with Kansas, Charlotte not being the Roval this time around, I’m actually happy about that even though the Roval was statistically very strong for us. I think that the oval can be as well. Phoenix has been great. I love Homestead. There’s really no tracks coming up – Bristol is my favorite track in the Chase. We don’t have to sit here and say we’ve got just one or two circled as opportunities. We feel like we have an opportunity everywhere we go. I’d say for me personally, Martinsville has probably been my weakest racetrack out of everything that we have coming at us and that’s pretty deep into the Chase, and what we’ve learned from the other two here, and what I’ve figured out from the driver’s side from the other two, our first race at Martinsville this year was shaping up to be a whole lot stronger, but we just had a freak deal happen there. I’m optimistic about that one as well, so I think that’s a long-winded answer of saying I don’t think we have to circle any specific one.”
THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS YOU SEEMED TO BE THE LAST ONE BUMPED OUT ON POINTS. HOW IS IT THIS YEAR KNOWING YOU ARE LOCKED IN? “That is not lost on me because this has been the last two races over the last two years that somebody comes at you from the top of the ropes and puts it down on the mat. It’s certainly rewarding to not be in that situation, to be right on the bubble and not have that fear of a straight-up unknown. I think it was two years ago where the unknown came from 30th or maybe 31st in points to knock us out. That hurts. So, to have a year that we’ve had, that’s been very consistent and very strong in a lot of places and not a fantastic year, but a very good year, knowing that should put us in the Chase, we are in the Chase and we don’t have that threat from a racetrack that can produce those wild one-off winners throughout a season. It is certainly nice and it’s a testament to the work that’s been done all season. It’s what we talked about in preseason is we’re gonna be able to make the Chase and it just depends on doing what we’ve always done and being consistent and not having the weeks where you fall out of it – trying not to have the wrecks through the year, trying not to give anything away. If we have a chance to run seventh on a day, it’s to make sure that you figure out how to run fifth and not 35th because of something that was just way too large of a Hail Mary. We want to get a little better. We want to be in the hunt to move up and be competing for wins as we finish out the season, and there’s a whole lot of tracks that we get to look ahead to. We had to come into Daytona and say, ‘Yeah, there’s really nothing for us to lose here.’ We have a little bit of points that we can gain with a good day, good strategy, good stage points whatever that may be, but we know how well our three cars work together when we go speedway racing, so we’ll be around each other, which typically means if one of us has a good day, the others are earning points as well. So, I think we go into this thing saying we’re all each other’s best friends at this race like normal, and that has a lot of potential for the best possible outcome for all of us.”
BRAD KESELOWSKI CONTINUED – TO COME INTO THIS WEEKEND WHERE POTENTIALLY ONLY ONE TEAM MAY MAKE THE CHASE. HOW DO YOU VIEW THAT BECAUSE EARLY IN THE YEAR ALL THREE OF YOU WERE IN POSITION? “Yeah, you’re right. If you back up to April or May we had all three cars pretty solidly in the playoffs and had a weak summer, particularly with the 6 car. That was less than ideal. I think there are some key learnings from that and certainly we won’t stand still on that. We just want to be better. We want to compete to be a tier one team and tier one teams put all of their cars in the playoffs. I don’t think we’re far off from being able to do that, but at some point you either are or you aren’t, so we’ve got to make sure that we get there.”
CHRIS BUESCHER CONTINUED – WHAT GIVES YOU THE ENTHUSIASM TO FEEL YOU CAN CONTEND FOR THE CHAMPIONSHIP FROM WHERE YOU WILL BE STARTING? “We’ve got a lot of really smart people back at RFK who have been able to run through scenarios and what these seasons would have looked like under the current format and kind of have a decent understanding of what your year needs to look like to truly be in the hunt for a championship. We haven’t quite been there. We kind of got to that fifth place in points and held on for a little bit and we also had a bit of a weak summer and with that slid back a little bit and now we have to kind of scratch and claw our way back up. It’s right there. It’s not a whole lot of points in between – really a swing one way or the other plus two, minus two – so we’re still in the hunt for that. When it does reset and you get into the Chase, it’s gonna take better days than we’ve had. It’s gonna take truly competing for wins to set you up to be in the hunt for a championship as it should. You come down to it and you should be winning races and having those stellar days that set you up to be able to hoist the trophy up at the end of the season as well. We’ve got some work to do, but we see it as an opportunity to move forward from where we’re currently at. We know we can because we’ve been there through this year already, but it’s also one of those you know you need to be seeded probably somewhere no worse than sixth to truly have a shot at it and that’s gonna be tough as well. We’re close. We’re in the hunt. We’re gonna do all we can to put more points on the board tomorrow night and certainly that’s a great opportunity for us because we’ve got really great race cars here through the years – lots of opportunities to win races and been able to win here and been really close at other times, so we need a couple of things and the speedway Gods to look positive on our days and if we can do that, we can certainly have a great outcome tomorrow evening.”
