Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Indianapolis Media Availability
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Noah Gragson, driver of the No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Front Row Motorsports, talked about this weekend’s upcoming race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during Ford’s weekly media call.
NOAH GRAGSON, No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford Mustang Dark Horse – IT’S BEEN A FRUSTRATING COUPLE OF WEEKS, BUT THE GOOD THING ABOUT THIS SPORT IS THERE’S ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY EVERY WEEK, SO HOW ARE YOU LOOKING AT THIS WEEKEND IN THE BRICKYARD 400? “We’re excited for it. I think Indy is an awesome place. I had a lot of fun there last year, so that being said, I’m excited. It’s another week to get onto the racetrack and try to have a good run. We’ve had good speed pretty much all year, just have had atrocious, atrocious luck getting collected in wrecks. It’s been a bummer, but we’re looking forward to the positives and that’s the opportunity that’s ahead.”
YOUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS VERY ENTERTAINING. WHAT IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY OF POSTING THE KIND OF THINGS YOU DO? “I probably have a bolder personality than other guys in the field that I show, and I want to give some behind the scenes on what the race weekend is like, what I do and it will be good memories to look back at one day. The YouTube videos and stuff, there’s Legend Car races on there from back in the day. I’ll go back and watch those every once in a while and it will be something cool to show my kids one day.”
DOES IT HELP TO KNOW YOU HAVE A MULTI-YEAR CONTRACT AND AREN’T IN THE SITUATION YOU WERE A YEAR AGO? THERE’S SOME STABILITY NOW. “It’s great knowing that Bob Jenkins and Jerry Freeze ultimately have everyone’s best interests. It’s definitely been a wild ride in my Cup career, but I’m very grateful for the opportunity to run at Front Row Motorsports. It’s been a home for me there, so I hope to race there for many more years.”
WHAT IS THE DYNAMIC LIKE AT FRM WITH YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATES BEING SO YOUNG? “I think it allows us, because we’re all friends and it’s not a forced relationship. Sometimes you have teammates where it’s a forced relationship and we naturally get along really well, so I think we all have each other’s best interest in mind. We want what’s best for the organization and we work together really well. I’ve been really pleased to see how Todd and Zane and I have been as teammates. We help each other on the track. We help each other off the track. I think having young guys, this question came up last year. We had a pretty young roster over at Stewart-Haas as well and when you get a veteran in the room you almost become hesitant to talk. You more want to listen and take in all of the information. Now, I think we have really open dialogue conversations and we’re able to speak what we really feel, where sometimes you might be hesitant when there’s a veteran in the room and you really don’t want to open your mouth. So, I think that’s a positive. We’re all pretty honest with each other. If we see something out of each other, we help each other grow and that’s probably the most important thing is having each other’s backs. I feel really good having Todd and Zane as teammates. I think we can keep on growing Front Row Motorsports and build it up to an organization that just raises the standard each and every year. I’m really confident with what we’ve got right now and can’t wait to see what the future looks like.”
WHAT KIND OF CONVERSATIONS HAVE YOU AND DREW HAD WITH ALL OF THIS BAD LUCK OF LATE? HOW DO YOU HANDLE THOSE SITUATIONS GOING INTO INDY? “I think the beginning of the year, the thing we’ve kind of banked in is our speed when we show up. We started last this past weekend because we got spun out twice at Sonoma. The second time it took us out of the race, so we started last or second-to-last and drove up within the top 15. We just kept chipping away at it all day and put ourselves in a decent opportunity up in the top 10 at the end of the race this past weekend. That’s kind of been the story of the year. The 54 hit us and wheel-barrowed us down the front straightaway and wrecked. I’ve just gotten collected in a lot of wrecks and it’s pretty frustrating. I think the speed of our race cars keep us focused and confident when we go to the track. If you don’t have the speed and you’re getting in wrecks, you’re like, ‘Man, I can’t catch a break.’ But, right now, it goes up and down. The beginning of the year we were just kind of trying to sell blue sky. It’s gonna be OK. This is eventually gonna turn, and maybe more than ever we’re telling ourselves that, but we have the speed. The speed is not a huge issue. It doesn’t matter if we’re 30th or fifth or anywhere in between, it seems like we just get caught up in a wreck. I look at this year. At the Daytona 500, we’re up in the top six or seven in the closing laps and Stenhouse and Logano get into each other and we get collected in that. Then we go to Atlanta and the 99 spins up the racetrack and clips us in the left-rear. We go to Vegas and Phoenix and get collected and wrecked there. I mean, we’re running seventh at Vegas with Blaney at the start of stage three, drove up there and had good cars. It’s just like, ‘Man.’ We’ve just got to finish these things. Never in my career in anything has, I’m not a big believer in luck, but maybe I am now because I don’t know who I pissed off or what happened, but it’s definitely not going our way this year. We just try to look forward to the next week and work as hard as possible and focus on the future and just take it one week at a time. We just said, ‘Hey, we’ve got an opportunity this weekend at Indy. Let’s prepare like we’re gonna try and win the race.’ No matter what happens, it’s definitely degrading I would say to wreck. It’s almost like you don’t know which way is up at times, but you just have to try and keep the confidence and stay focused, and I feel like for as bad as it’s gone this year result-wise, we’ve kept a pretty level head in the grand scheme of things. I’m proud of the team we’ve got. I’m proud of Drew. It’s almost to the point right now where we’re frustrated, but we just laugh. We’ll be like, ‘Come on, man. Dude, I don’t know what to tell you.’ It’s just one of those years. We keep believing in each other. If we trust each other, it’ll turn around eventually. It’s kind of like roulette. If you keep betting on black and it’s hitting red, eventually it’s gonna turn. We’ll see. It’s not a question of if, it’s just when.”
WHAT WAS YOUR MENTALITY GOING INTO LAST WEEK KNOWING THE LAST THING YOU NEED TO DO IS GET CAUGHT UP IN A WRECK, AND THEN TO SEE IT UNFOLD LIKE IT DID AT THE END? “You’ve got to be aggressive. In 2023, I wrecked a lot on my own and tore up a lot of stuff. I feel like it’s different this year. I have definitely made mistakes, but a majority of the instances I’ve been an innocent bystander in the situation, in my opinion. For those that pay attention, I feel like they probably agree, but like we chipped away at it this weekend. We started 36th and worked our way up in the top 15. We were running eighth when we got involved in that crash. It’s challenging because you don’t want to be tearing up stuff. It would be one thing if I was spinning out and wrecking every weekend. I think that’s a little more challenging of a situation, but I feel like I’m in pretty good control. You just try and take it week by week and prepare like it’s gonna be a smooth, solid race and a clean race, but obviously stuff happens and we’ve seen examples of that this year.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE AS YOU MATURE THESE CHALLENGES ARE WHAT A LOT OF PEOPLE GO THROUGH AND THE ONES WHO SUCCEED ARE THE ONES THAT DON’T LET THOSE THINGS TEAR THEM APART? “Yeah, that’s what they say, I guess. The great ones go through challenges, but, I don’t know, I’m kind of over it. I just want a week to go good, but I know that it does definitely build you up during these times. You definitely work on yourself and focus on yourself and just try to become better. When you’re winning every race and you’re on top of the world, you don’t feel like you need a lot of improvement, but it’s times when you’re in the trenches where you really get down in the weeds and look at yourself in the mirror and have a lot of reflection. It’s tough, but we’ll get through it.”
FRM HAS BEEN QUALIFYING WELL ON OVALS. WHAT DOES THE TEAM NEED THIS WEEKEND SPECIFICALLY AT INDY? “Having a fast car. That’s every week. Having a fast car and having track position and driving as fast as you can.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL THE IN-SEASON CHALLENGE HAS GONE? WOULD YOU CHANGE ANYTHING? “I like it. It’s all good. I have no complaints.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT STREET RACES IN THE FUTURE? “I don’t know. I haven’t seen the schedule yet, so I can’t really comment on any of that, but the street races are fun.”
HAVE YOU PAID ATTENTION TO THE FACT BRISTOL IS GOING TO HAVE AN MLB GAME INSIDE THE TRACK NEXT WEEK? “I think it’s really cool that they’re doing that. It’s out of the ordinary. I remember when, who was it? Virginia Tech and Tennessee played. That was super cool how they’re able to transform the track. It’s just a completely different atmosphere. It’s almost like when they play basketball on the aircraft carrier. or the Winter Classic in the outdoor stadiums for hockey. It’s just a different atmosphere, and I think it’s really cool, and I think people want to be a part of it. I don’t know what the ticket sales are, but I imagine they’re probably really good. I know when they announced it I was like, ‘OK, I want to go to that,’ but I don’t think that’s in the forecast, unfortunately. It’s definitely gonna be cool just being able to race there and being a driver that’s raced there and won there, knowing what that place means to me. Having a different sport there and demographic, a different fan base I should say, I think it’s definitely good for the sport of NASCAR because people will go to the track and say, ‘Wow, look at this place. This is incredible,’ and maybe they might come to a race. I think it’s a great cross-promotion between MLB and NASCAR because it will get some NASCAR fans out to the baseball game when they might not go to a baseball game, or they don’t have a baseball team near them in Bristol, Tennessee, so it’s definitely super, super unique and very exciting, I think. I like Elly De La Cruz, so I’ll be cheering him on. It’ll be cool.”
IF YOU HAD TO MAKE A ROSTER OUT OF NASCAR DRIVERS BESIDES THE DILLONS, WHO WOULD YOU WANT ON A TEAM? “I’d probably take Ricky Stenhouse, just because we’ve got good chemistry together. Probably Austin. Ty might be decent. I’d probably take Denny. He’s an athletic guy. He could do a lot of sports – kind of the guys with hand-eye coordination. You’re talking guys who can throw a football or shoot a basketball, maybe golfers – so probably a Chase Elliott and Bubba and Ryan Blaney, but maybe Briscoe. Briscoe has been throwing a lot of first pitches out at these games, trying to collect these DAP points, so he’s been on the mound a lot lately, so he might be our pitcher, or he might be in the bullpen. I would probably say those guys.”
IOWA FOLLOWS INDIANAPOLIS. I KNOW THERE ARE SOME PATCHES IN THE TURNS AND IT’S A ROUGH SURFACE, SO WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THAT TRACK? “I used to love that place. It’s still alright. It’s just like a racetrack now, but it used to be super cool. I don’t know why they only repaved sections of the corners, like the bottom half of the corners. They should have just either repaved the whole track or repaved the whole corners, so you could move around. It’s kind single lane, so I don’t know whose thought process that was, other than the only reason would be they didn’t have the money to do it. It’s kind of just another track for us now. I think all of us in the field will probably say that it was the best track ever. Before, I raced in Xfinity cars and Trucks and in the K&N Series back in the day, ARCA now, we all loved it and now it’s kind of just running around the bottom. It’s just another track, unfortunately, but I still love going out there. The people and the fans are great. Iowa is super cool. It’s what we’ve got, but I wish they would have repaved the whole entire corner, so you could run the top, the middle, the bottom. That’s what made that track so great is you had four different lanes. You could run and they were all pretty fast, and wherever you got your car set up, you could run there. It was the perfect racetrack, but I think a common theme between racetracks these days is you’ve got to appreciate them when they’re good because you don’t know how long they’ll stay good.”
HOW IS THE GOLF GAME GOING? “I haven’t really played a whole lot. It’s been way too hot out. I haven’t played a ton, but I hope to play more when it cools down, for sure. It’s decent. I’m like a 13.5 handicap – not great.”
