Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Freeway Insurance 500 — Phoenix Raceway
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Ford Finishing Results:
2nd – Ryan Blaney
6th – Joey Logano
11th – Josh Berry
13th – Noah Gragson
14th – Todd Gilliland
15th – Zane Smith
16th – Brad Keselowski
18th – Ryan Preece
19th – Austin Cindric
22nd – Chris Buescher
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “At the very end I started closing in. I wish I would have found the top of three and four a little earlier. That seemed to be working pretty good, but he just got away a little bit there. It took me a second to get to second, but then we kind of stabilized for a long time and at the very end I started to make a little ground, but it was just a little bit too late. Overall, I’m proud of the effort and it was a really good day of them sticking with it and getting better through the day. I thought the first run of the race we were good and then kind of lost a little bit there in stage two, but we progressively got better in stage three. That’s something to be proud of there.” HOW CHALLENGING WAS THIS RACE? “There were a lot of different strategies. My guys did a good job of staying on top of it and just trying to work it out and figure a way to get better. It was definitely a tough race, but that’s why we do it.” WHAT MORE DID YOU NEED? “Seven more laps maybe (laughing). It just took me a while to kind of get to him where he started fading and I was able to creep in, but we just didn’t quite have enough to get to him. Overall, I’m proud of the effort all day of getting better from the middle part of the race I thought we got a lot better from where we were in the middle.” WERE YOU AWARE LARSON DROPPED OUT AND SAW AN OPPORTUNITY TO CASH IN AND WIN? “I didn’t know he dropped out. I knew they had a rough day. I didn’t know they were 30-something, but I was just trying hard to win the race. No matter where they’re at, that’s really important, but I didn’t know until I got out about how his day was like.” OUTLOOK FOR TALLADEGA? “We’ll just keep chipping away at it. We did a good job today of getting some good points and finishing well and being in contention to win the race. We’ll just try to do the same thing next week of trying to run well through the stages and find ourselves in a spot to capitalize at the end. It’s better than where we came in, so we just have to keep chipping away at it.” DO YOU FEEL 40 POINTS IS DIGESTABLE TO BE IN STRIKING DISTANCE? “It feels a lot better than 80. That’s definitely doable, for sure, and we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. I feel like when we finish these races we’ve run really well. Outside of St. Louis and Bristol, we’ve put together a really good Chase with really fast cars running up towards the front. It makes me feel better leaving here only 78 back or way over, so we’ve just got to keep working.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Hunt Brothers Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “It was good and bad, I guess. The good part is that we were fast and led a bunch of laps and won two stages. The bad part is we gave away a win. That part hurts a little bit, but I guess we made up close to 50 points to the leader, so you can’t be too mad about it. I wish we had it back.” YOU HAD SOME ISSUES IN STAGE 3, BUT STILL MANAGED A GOOD FINISH. “You’ve got to execute everything. We’re okay. I mean, the pit crew had a smoking day going, but just that one hiccup and that’s all it takes these days. You have to be absolutely perfect. That’s all.” WITH THREE TO GO NOW, YOU TOOK A BIG CHUNK OUT, SO HOW DO YOU FEEL? “We’re more optimistic than we were coming in, so I kind of thought if we can be 60 out, we’ll probably be in decent shape and I think we’re 40-something out, so, overall, it was a solid day.”
JOSH BERRY, No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “I had a great car the first couple of stages. It was really, really good, but then we just seemed to lose a little bit when the sun came out and it just didn’t quite turn as well. We lost a little speed and then the last couple of restarts I got beat around a little bit. We definitely should have been top five or top 10 for sure, but, all in all, it was a pretty good day.” SO MANY TIRE ISSUES AND STRATEGY CALLS. “We got a little bit off strategy there and it was gonna work out by the end, but we got shipped up the racetrack on that last restart. I’m just really proud of the car we had at the start of the race. I felt like we had the best car and just hate that it got away from us.”
