POCONO
Sunday, June 14– NASCAR Cup Series, 3 p.m. ET (PRIME)
The NASCAR Cup Series makes its annual trip to the Pocono Mountains for this weekend’s Great American Getaway 400 on Sunday afternoon. Ryan Blaney and Chris Buescher are the two active drivers who have series victories with Ford at the track, which has been hosting races since 1974. Ford has 25 wins overall at the Tricky Triangle with Bill Elliott’s four from 1985-89 leading the way.
BERRY TO MAKE 100TH CUP START
Wood Brothers Racing driver Josh Berry will be making his 100th career NASCAR Cup Series start this weekend when the circuit makes its annual stop at Pocono Raceway. Berry’s most memorable moment to this point was his first victory with the team last year in the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. That made him the 20th driver to win at least one series race for the organization and guaranteed his spot in the postseason for the first time.
FIRST-TIME CUP WINNERS
There are currently four Ford Racing NASCAR Cup drivers still looking for their first series victory (Todd Gilliland, Zane Smith, Noah Gragson, Ryan Preece). Pocono Raceway is a place where that has happened on a few occasions, most recently in 2017 when Ryan Blaney scored his first victory while driving for the Wood Brothers. Jeremy Mayfield (1998), Denny Hamlin (2006) and Chris Buescher (2016) are the other three who also made the “Tricky Triangle” the place for their first trip to Victory Lane.
SITTING ON 749
The next Ford win will be its 750th all-time in NASCAR’s top series. Ned Jarrett is Ford’s win leader with 43 while Bill Elliott is second with 40. Shirtless Jimmy Florian scored the Blue Oval’s first series victory when he upset the likes of Lee Petty, Curtis Turner and Joe Weatherly at Dayton Speedway on June 25, 1950. Florian earned his nickname after getting out of his 1950 flathead Ford without a shirt. Overall, 91 drivers have won at least one series race with Ford, including notable drivers Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, A.J. Foyt, Richard Petty, and Dale Earnhardt.
QUESTION: WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT YOUR FIRST WIN AT POCONO?
CHRIS BUESCHER: “Lots of things that were very positive, and then on the negative side of it, I’ll just start with that because when we did get the final OK, that’s it, we’re calling it, it was almost an hour-and-a-half later. I think all the pit boxes on pit road were shut down and sealed up. People were gone. Haulers were missing. It was pretty clear that we were done and we hung out for a long time. The negative side to that is at the end of it, there was nobody to celebrate with. I think there were eight people, mainly our team standing on pit road, and the grandstands were empty. Pit road was empty. The garage was all but empty. We couldn’t use the really neat Victory Lane at Pocono that has since been replaced, so we had to go do an alternate one in the garage. There was no celebration on the frontstretch. No burnout to it. It took away some of the most fun parts about winning races in just that raw emotion in the moment. That being said, it was huge for us. I remember how the day went. We had an accident that we narrowly avoided, but I think we touched fenders with somebody and with a metal body car it ended up cutting a tire down. So, we ended up on pit road off sequence, which set us up to be able to run longer on that fuel run. That put us in a spot to where as cars started pitting, the rain was far enough out, but the fog is unpredictable in Pocono. I had an ARCA win narrowly slip away due to fog at Pocono, ironically. I’ll still trade it for that Cup win at the end of the day, so I’m OK with it now, but it let us stay out there just long enough. Jamie McMurray was ahead of us and when he pitted and then I think it was the next straightaway they came over the radio and they’re like, ‘Hey, the visibility is getting pretty bad up here. How is it from your standpoint going down the backstretch?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s fine.’ And as soon as I let the words come out of my mouth, I realized, ‘Well, that was the wrong answer. I know what they were fishing for.’ They were very quick to ask me again the next straightaway and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s really bad. I can’t see a thing. I’m sure you can’t see me either. This feels unsafe.’ I was a little bit of a slow learner back then, but it was a really big moment for us and everybody at Front Row Motorsports. To be able to put ourselves in the playoffs that season was huge in our rookie year, so I definitely have a lot of things that come back to me from that race and it was certainly a fun one. It was unfortunate not to get to celebrate the proper way because wins in this sport are so hard to come by no matter how they arrive and you certainly want to have that ability to celebrate with all the people who work so hard to create those moments and it didn’t quite feel the same as any of the wins since.”
RYAN BLANEY: “It was a wild race in 2017 with the Wood Brothers. I had a great car all day. I lost communication with my team early in that race, probably a third of the way through. Fortunately, I could hear them but they couldn’t hear me, so communication-wise I knew when to pit, which was good and we really just had a system of if I was tight, hand on the roof, and if I was too loose, hand on the door and they would make adjustments to that. We had a good pit stop at the end of the race to get out and be the first guys on tires. I was able to get by Kyle Busch with 10 or 11 laps to go and then I had to hold Kevin (Harvick) off. It was more stressful trying to hold Kevin off than trying to get the lead because now you’re in the lead trying to win your first Cup race and all you can think about is just don’t make a mistake and don’t give it away, so that was a stressful 10 laps or so to hold Kevin off, but he raced me really clean. The other thing that was the most fun about that day is it wasn’t just my first Cup win, it was a lot of my team’s first Cup win too, so being able to share that moment with them and celebrate, to be able to win for the Wood Brothers was something I always wanted to achieve and to have your poster up on the wall in Stuart (VA) was something pretty neat. That was number 99 for the Wood Brothers. I wish we could have got 100, but that came a few years later. Still, that was a fun day and an even better night.”
BLANEY GETS FIRST CUP VICTORY
Ryan Blaney earned his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in 2017 at Pocono Raceway, giving the Wood Brothers their 99th all-time series win. Blaney held off Kevin Harvick over the final seven laps to win the Pocono 400 after overcoming a loose wheel only 19 laps into the event. He found himself in position to win after the caution came out with 19 laps to go. Kyle Busch opted to stay out while all of the other contenders behind him pitted, including Blaney who got four fresh tires and restarted fourth. A major battle between Busch and Blaney resulted, but the newer tires proved to be too much as Blaney eventually got by with nine laps to go. He couldn’t breathe easy, however, as Harvick started to reel him in. Despite closing the gap, Harvick could never pull alongside to challenge and Blaney took the checkered flag.
BUESCHER JOINS FIRST-TIME WINNERS CLUB AT POCONO
Chris Buescher is another Ford driver who posted his first NASCAR Cup Series win at Pocono when he won the rain-shortened Pennsylvania 400 in 2016. Buescher led the final 12 laps and qualified for the playoffs as the scheduled 160-lap race was called after 138 circuits. It represented the second series win and first playoff qualification for Front Row Motorsports, which Buescher drove for in 2016 after the organization entered into an alliance with what was then Roush Fenway Racing.
KULWICKI’S FINAL WIN
When Alan Kulwicki won the Champion Spark Plug 500 on June 14, 1992 it marked the final victory of his NASCAR Hall of Fame career. Kulwicki, who was voted into the Hall in 2019, passed Bill Elliott with 11 laps remaining to cap a day that saw 15 cars drop out before the checkered flag flew, including 11 engine failures. In a precursor to what happened a few months later at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Kulwicki and Elliott battled down the stretch as they exchanged the lead multiple times over the final 25 laps. Kulwicki passed Elliott for the top spot on lap 181, but traffic slowed him down to the point that five laps later the two swapped positions. Mark Martin made it a three-way battle, but Kulwicki ultimately prevailed as he got by both drivers on lap 190 and never looked back. Kulwicki, who won five series races overall, went on to win the championship later that year over fellow Ford drivers Elliott and Davey Allison.
FORD’S NASCAR CUP SERIES WINNERS
AT POCONO
1985 – Bill Elliott (Sweep)
1988 – Bill Elliott (2)
1989 – Terry Labonte and Bill Elliott
1990 – Geoffrey Bodine (2)
1992 – Alan Kulwicki (1)
1994 – Rusty Wallace and Geoffrey Bodine
1995 – Dale Jarrett (2)
1996 – Rusty Wallace (2)
1997 – Dale Jarrett (2)
1998 – Jeremy Mayfield (1)
2000 – Jeremy Mayfield and Rusty Wallace
2001 – Ricky Rudd (1)
2002 – Dale Jarrett (1)
2005 – Carl Edwards and Kurt Busch
2008 – Carl Edwards (2)
2010 – Greg Biffle (2)
2016 – Chris Buescher (2)
2017 – Ryan Blaney (1)
2020 – Kevin Harvick (1)
2024 – Ryan Blaney
Ryan Blaney celebrates his second NASCAR Cup Series victory at Pocono on July 14, 2024.
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