Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Anduril 250 Qualifying — Naval Base Coronado
Saturday, June 20, 2026
Ford Qualifying Results:
3rd – Ryan Blaney
4th – Zane Smith
5th – Todd Gilliland
7th – Ryan Preece
16th – Chris Buescher
19th – Joey Logano
29th – Brad Keselowski
31st – Austin Cindric
32nd – Noah Gragson
35th – Josh Berry
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Wurth Ford Mustang Dark Horse – DID YOU SURPRISE YOURSELF WITH THAT LAP? “Yeah, a little bit. I’ve said it before, I feel like I’m an average road racer. I don’t think I excel at this stuff very much. I’ve worked really hard to try to get better, and I thought we had an OK day yesterday. Coming into today, you really get one lap because the tires were so bad and it’s the only lap we’re gonna make today and you just hope you hit it right and pick up the multiple seconds that we were running yesterday. I had a good lap. I didn’t know I had it until the final last little chicane and that kind of bums me out a little bit, but, overall, a really good effort by the 12 boys. They worked on it overnight, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow. It’s gonna be a heck of a race. Tire degradation is massive, so it’s who can manage rears better. It’s just a cool event. It’s cool to be out here. I appreciate the Wurth group being on the car, Ford Racing, it should be a fun day tomorrow.” WHAT KIND OF RACING WILL WE SEE TOMORROW? “Your guess is as good as mine. I’ll be racking through it tonight just talking with Jonathan tonight on what do we think the best way to go about things are, and then you plan as much as you can but sometimes you’re gonna have to audible in the race and understand where you’re at and what you want to do, and then see what the tire wear is like tomorrow. So, that’s the fun part about these new things. This whole weekend has been super cool to be here on the base. I appreciate them having us. The fans have been amazing the whole weekend and it should be a great day tomorrow for sure. As far as racing goes, I don’t know. Manage rear tires and don’t hit any concrete. I hope I can do those two things and we might have a shot.”
ZANE SMITH, No. 38 Hard Rock Casino Tejon/Hard Rock Cafe Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “There are certainly a lot of positives. The 34 team unloaded really strong yesterday and, fortunately, this is why you have teammates. I was able to get as close as I think we could to them overnight and that felt great to be able to do. I watched Todd a lot yesterday and I feel just more comparable. We slide in the same spots. We get tight in the same spots. It’s good. Now we can truthfully balance things off of each other and hopefully have a good day tomorrow.”
TODD GILLILAND, No. 34 Grillo’s Pickles Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “There is always some sort of battle between teammates, but that’s how it goes. It was a solid lap for us. You always want more, but we’ll just keep working on it. That sometimes is all you can do and that should give us a solid starting spot for tomorrow. We can work from there.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Ralph’s/Scott 1000 Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Honestly, I felt yesterday we had a really good Ford Mustang Dark Horse and today they made good adjustments and good decisions. I felt like I actually blew turn 13 and kind of missed it really bad and we still ended up seventh, so we’ll take it. It’s a good day with a good starting spot.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW DO YOU VIEW THIS RACE AS FAR AS BEING AN OPPORTUNITY? “You have to be realistic about it. It’s a challenge. It’s gonna be hard, but also being realistic it’s hard for everybody, not just for me and my team. Everybody out there has got quite the challenge ahead of them. We have to obviously look at risks probably a little differently than some, just depending on where you’re at, but that’s no different than any other racetrack.” IS IT A BALANCE BETWEEN BEING CONSERVATIVE AND AGGRESSIVE? “Yeah, you don’t want to be too conservative and be slow. You’ve got to take risks to go fast and we need to go pretty quick. We can’t just limp around and hope everybody wrecks. I’ve done that before and nobody wrecks, now I think a lot will, but I do think it’ll be somewhat of a survival race, but it may be a lot like Chicago was, where a lot of times you had to have some kind of pace to be competitive and keep yourself up towards the front. Strategy will be a big piece tomorrow and I don’t think anyone knows exactly how to play it yet.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 2 Menards/Cardell Cabinetry Ford Mustang Dark Horse – BASED ON WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN, HOW DO YOU THINK THE RACE WILL PLAY OUT TOMORROW? “I think if it’s anything like practice, I mean tire wear is gonna be high. They obviously added another set of tires for the race. This reminds me a lot of when we were at the Roval in the playoffs last year with the tires just kind of falling apart and not laying down rubber, so it’ll be interesting to see if that continues because otherwise it’s gonna be a lot of shorter runs with that kind of tire wear.” DOES THAT NEGATE FLIPPING STAGES? “There’s still no replacement for track position. I would say from my experience when you’re off strategy on older tires, you want a lot of people to do it with you and you want all of those people to be behind you, so I don’t feel like it’s very straightforward one way or the other. Predicting cautions, how is that gonna fall? If there’s anything, I don’t think fuel is ever gonna be a concern for anybody tomorrow.”
