Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Kansas Race 2 — Kansas Speedway
Sunday, September 27, 2026
CINDRIC CHARGES TO SECOND PLACE FINISH IN KANSAS
NASCAR CUP SERIES RACE RECAP
- Austin Cindric led all Ford drivers at Kansas Speedway finishing second in the No. 2 Discount Tires Ford Mustang Dark Horse.
- Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 Mustang came to life late in the going to score a fifth place at the checkered flag. Ryan Preece also broke the top ten finishing tenth in the No. 60 RFK Ford.
- Despite a frustrating finish to his day, Joey Logano holds fourth in the Chase standings, 67 points behind the leader, Kyle Larson. Blaney is fifth (-91). With his runnerup Kansas finish, Cindric is ninth (-140).
Ford Unofficial Finishing Results:
2nd – Austin Cindric
5th – Ryan Blaney
10th – Ryan Preece
12th – Brad Keselowski
19th – Todd Gilliland
20th – Joey Logano
23rd – Chris Buescher
31st – Zane Smith
35th – Josh Berry
36th – Noah Gragson
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “I definitely wish I would have had a shot there. You know, I thought we were really strong all day. We made some decent adjustments and got ourselves good for those long runs for the final run. We just lost a bit too much time in the pit cycle. I think there’s definitely some things I could have done better. I stayed long in the stall and threw off the stop a bit. When you lose by only half a second, it comes down to all the little stuff. Those guys had a hell of a battle for the lead to give me a shot. Super proud of the effort from everyone at Team Penske, Discount Tire and Ford.I feel like I had a car that could have won today but didn’t. I can be happy and pissed about that at the same time. Hopefully we can transfer that over to next week and the week following because I don’t see the reason why we can’t. I think these are the tracks you have to be critically good on. We saw pieces of this from Chicago and I felt like we took some bits and pieces and applied them to Kansas, and obviously, you can see what it did. I’m super proud of everybody on the team, keeping us in it all day and unloading super close.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Cardell Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We were moving at the end. And, gosh, seven or eight more laps and I might have actually had a shot to win the thing. We were mowing them down rapidly the last 10, 12 laps. Just a good job by them sticking with it. Starting where we did, you know, and just working on it. Getting a little bit better through the day, I thought. Our last run or two of the day was our best run of the day. So really proud of that effort. This is a place where we’ve worked really hard to try to figure out how we can be better here. I thought we had a great day. The 2 [Austin Cindric] had a really good day. It was fast all day. Solid effort. We definitely got better at the start of stage three. I thought that’s where we really got it better. I think a lot of it was just getting some track position, right? You’re buried in traffic and you’re trying to figure out what does your car need to do well there. And then as you get cleaner air, it’s like, all right, now you’re adjusting again and trying to play catch up there. It just kind of took some time to do that. But, they stuck with it and made good changes.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Castrol Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “It’s a tough race. We were just on the tight side at the start. We were able to fight around the top 10 there. We were trying to work forward, to make some adjustments, and then we got caught up in the wreck on the restart and got some damage. It seemed to really put us behind from there. We struggled to get it back. From there, we just weren’t really able to find anything to get us heading in the right direction. Unfortunate. I thought it was gonna be a really good night.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Dillons/Celsius Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We just kind of fluttered and floated around that eighth to 15th all day. I felt like Derek had a good move strategy wise to get us a top 10. So that was about what we had.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “We had a solid Shell-Pennzoil Ford all day. We stayed in the top 10 and picked up some stage points, but we were chasing the balance a little bit all afternoon. We worked hard to keep ourselves in the mix, so it was frustrating to have the tire issue at the end. We’ll put this one behind us and see if we can keep the momentum heading to Vegas.”
