Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Southern 500 — Darlington Raceway
Sunday, September 6, 2026
Ford Finishing Results:
4th – Ryan Blaney
7th – Josh Berry
9th – Joey Logano
10th – Ryan Preece
13th – Austin Cindric
16th – Todd Gilliland
20th – Chris Buescher
23rd – Brad Keselowski
25th – Zane Smith
32nd – Noah Gragson
38th – Chad Finchum
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW DO YOU DESCRIBE THE OVERALL DAY. THE PIT CREW DID THEIR JOB. “Yeah, they did their job. It was a good call to take tires. We had about four laps on them and, honestly, that restart wasn’t very good for me. I was really tight so I’m like, ‘We probably should take the opportunity to work on it and get tires.’ We were able to pick our way through there and have a good finish out of it. When the night came we lost a little bit of handle. We just got tight and it just took forever to get it back turning when the track cooled off, but, overall, it was a good day with good stage points and a decent finish, so we’ll keep going.” DID IT SURPRISE PEOPLE HOW QUICKLY THE TRACK CHANGED? “Yeah. I mean it goes through a big swing when the temp goes down. Once the sun starts setting it starts in three and four because that’s where the shade is and then it kind of works its way to one and two and then the track really changes, so you try to stay on top of it and I probably didn’t do the best job of getting to where we needed to be early and had to play some catch-up, but, overall, we stuck with it, ran all the laps and got a decent finish out of it, so I’m proud of the effort.”
JOSH BERRY, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “It was a lot of fun. There were a couple runs where I thought we were super, super good. I just struggled a little bit firing off, but the trade off of that was we were kind of always moving forward throughout the runs and then just how the race played out at the end. I thought we made the right call getting the tires. I probably should have picked the top, but, all in all, the guys did a really good job. We had a really solid car for no practice or anything and the pit crew had some sloppy ones to get it started but they locked in there at the end and held their own when it counted and that’s all you can ask for.” YOU SEEMED TO BE ABLE TO MOVE THROUGH THE FIELD CONSISTENTLY THE WHOLE RACE. WAS THAT JUST HAVING A GOOD CAR? “Yeah, I think obviously we had a good car. We struggled a little bit firing off. I think the trade off for that was some long run pace. There were a couple runs where I was super happy with the car and a couple runs where I would just kind of ask it for more, but we’re running fifth so it’s just a great job by the guys. The cars have been a lot better this last two months and its shown. To come here, the first race of the Chase and to be the first non-Chase car and probably wasn’t even close for most of the night for how we ran, so I’m just proud of the guys. They’ve dug in hard and obviously I’m excited to get another top 10 and keep the streak going, but I felt like there was more out there tonight.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Pennzoil Ultra Platinum Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We fought our own issues there, but it was much better than the last time we were here. We were about a ninth or 10th place car and we finished there. A couple of restarts from the end we kind of drove up there to seventh or so and I’m like, ‘Oooh, I’ve got something.’ And then we tried to stay out and make something happen. Four laps is kind of right at that edge and Larson hung pretty good with clean air, but if you don’t have that it’s pretty tough. We fought and battled to try to just go back to where we were, so it was a net neutral, but then you go and look at the 12 and the 12 got us way back up there to fifth or so. We were ahead of him when the caution came out, but we’re at that spot I think where those risks are well warranted. We didn’t get any stage points, so you kind of have to go for it.” THE MECHANICAL ISSUE YOU FACED. ANY IDEA WHAT IT WAS? “I don’t know yet. It sputtered the whole day, so it’s something. I don’t know. It kept getting worse and I’m not really sure what it is yet.” ALL THINGS CONSIDERED IT WAS A GOOD NIGHT? “From what it could have been. I thought for a minute there we were gonna have to come down pit road and try to fix it because it kept getting worse, but it kind of never got as bad as I thought it was gonna get. It definitely feels like it was down about 80 horse and on the straightaways it was just sputtering, but we’d hang in on the long run OK because of it.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Consumer Cellular Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Losing track position there was tough, but I feel like 10th is better than a 30th or a 25th or a 20th and we did make gains. Do I want to win? Yeah, but hindsight being 20/20 I think we maximized what we were gonna maximize today.” NEXT WEEK IS ANOTHER WEEK, RIGHT? “ I feel good about. The metric and everything is gonna work in our favor, so I think we should be fine.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Kroger/Gold Peak Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We had good fire off and got going and were able to pass a ton of cars after unfortunately getting qualifying rained out, so it was a big start. We kind of got rolling there. I don’t know where we were running exactly, but I had a moment off four and got the fence and bent some rear suspension and spent most of the race just hanging on until we had a chance to fix it under yellow. That was all of the second stage waiting and then we finally got it fixed and was just trying to get our laps back. We finally got them there with 30 laps to go and just didn’t have enough racing left to recover. It’s unfortunate. I screwed up and I hate it for this team. They had a lot of high hopes coming in here and didn’t get the result out of it.” THIS NEW FORMAT IS A BIT MORE FORGIVING, SO YOU HAVE MORE TIME TO RECOVER. “Yeah, for sure. I’m a big fan of what we’ve got now and the fact that we can still reset and keep digging, but we’re gonna need some phenomenal weeks to really get back in the hunt here after that, which we kind of knew from the get-go that it was gonna take that. A couple more tracks coming up in the immediate future and I really don’t feel like we have any bad ones, so we’ll be in a good spot.”
