Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Daytona 500 | Sunday, February 19, 2023
Ford Finishing Results:
2nd – Joey Logano
4th – Chris Buescher
8th – Ryan Blaney
10th – Riley Herbst
12th – Kevin Harvick
13th – Zane Smith
14th – Cody Ware
21st – Aric Almirola
22nd – Brad Keselowski
23rd – Austin Cindric
26th – Harrison Burton
27th – Todd Gilliland
28th – Michael McDowell
35th – Chase Briscoe
36th – Ryan Preece
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang (Finished 2nd) – “Second is the worst, man. You’re so close. Leading the white flag lap there, I was up front. Kyle gave me a good push and, yeah, you’re watching in the mirror and you’re three wide across there. I felt like the three wide was going a hurt a lane; looked like Kyle was getting pushed ahead, and then Ricky started getting pushed ahead. I knew if I went to the bottom my car didn’t handle good enough. I already got pushed off the bottom once and I thought, if I go down there I’m probably going to get wrecked, and I don’t know if I can get down there in time to throw the block and so I didn’t want to wreck my car either. Then you don’t expect them to wreck either. You think you’re racing to the checkered flag and you put yourself in the best position to try to win at the start-finish line, and just caution came out — you wish you could race to the end. Obviously you can’t when they wreck that much. Congratulations to Ricky. There’s nothing like winning the Daytona 500. That’s why it stings so much finishing second. Still proud of the team, still proud of the effort coming off the championship last year and bringing this Shell-Pennzoil Mustang back toward the front and getting a Ford close to the front. Wish it was in Victory Lane, though.”
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang (Finished 4th) – ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED WITH 4TH WITH AS GOOD AS YOUR CAR WAS? “Yeah, at the end of the day, yeah. We were up front a lot of the day between both of our cars and there is a ton to be proud of. I can’t thank everyone back at RFK enough. The Fastenal Mustang was quick, and I love that. Just got a little behind there in the first overtime and survived the next one. Somehow we made it through all of that and picked up all kinds of spots. Ultimately even getting back to fourth, it should feel good, but I feel like we had more in us today and just weren’t able to hoist that trophy up.”
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Blue Def/Peak Ford Mustang (Finished 8th) – “You know, unfortunately getting tore up in the second stage and I thought we did a good job fixing it and staying in it and got a couple of laps back and were able to get it driving decent enough to where we lined up in the top-15 and were able to miss some wrecks and finish okay. I am really proud of the effort to fix it and make it driveable and get a finish. It is unfortunate that we couldn’t race for a win.
RILEY HERBST, No. 15 Sunny D Ford Mustang (Finished 10th) – “It was long and a lot of riding, not really racing. I was kind of biding my time and trying to get experience. To finish top-10 was really cool. I am thankful for the opportunity to be here in the Cup Series and really happy with the finish in our first 500.”
HARRISON BURTON, No. 21 Motorcraft/DEX Imaging Ford Mustang (Finished 26th) – “I am just disappointed. We were leading with 18 to go and I feel like we had a shot. It just didn’t go our way. The outside just didn’t really get rolling and we didn’t get organized very well and by the time we did it was just a little too late. I feel like when the 22 pulled up in front of me I tried to slow down to engage him and I got hit by the 8 really hard and send the 22 three-wide and we lost momentum again. I don’t know why I got out of shape off of four but I about wrecked off of four. Then you’re buried in the back trying to make moves to get back up and when they wreck you are just right in the way. It is frustrating. I felt like we executed our race well. Just sucks not to win for sure.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford Mustang – “Everybody was on green flag cycles. People trying to block the rows are trying to cycle in and I just want to focus on the fact that we had such a fast Haas Tooling Ford Mustang. This opportunity is exactly what I wanted, so it’s unfortunate because I felt like we were gonna put ourselves in position to give ourselves an opportunity to be in contention to win this race, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Hopefully, we keep unloading fast Ford Mustangs like we did this weekend and we’ll have some fun.”
CHASE BRISCOE, No. 14 Mahindra Tractors Ford Mustang – “We were coming off that pit sequence and everybody was such different speeds and you could definitely tell the intensity was ratcheting up. Everybody was just making really aggressive blocks trying to position themselves for the end. I don’t know. We just all checked up into one and it was a bad wreck for Stewart-Haas because all four of us were stuck in that. I just hate it. It felt like we were in position. We talked about what our plan was going into it and felt like we were executing that, but we just needed a little luck at the end to go with it. We’ll move on to California and see if we can improve. Obviously, we need to improve. We finished 34th again, so that’s what we’ll try to do.”
