NORTH WILKESBORO
Saturday, July 18 — NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, 12:30 p.m. ET (FS1)
Sunday, July 19 — NASCAR Cup Series, 7 p.m. ET (TNT)
After hosting the NASCAR All-Star Race each of the last three years, North Wilkesboro Speedway will conduct its first points race in 30 years when the NASCAR Cup Series arrives for Sunday’s Window World 450. Joey Logano is the lone Ford Cup driver with a victory on the track after winning the 2024 All-Star Race while Chandler Smith is the defending winner of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event.
BLANEY SECURES FORD’S 750TH CUP WIN
Ryan Blaney swept the weekend at EchoPark Speedway as he won the pole and all three stages to deliver Ford Racing its 750th all-time NASCAR Cup Series victory. Blaney, who led 14 times for a race-high 171 laps, passed Carson Hocevar on the final lap to record his second win of the season and 19th of his career. The victory also extended his personal-best streak of consecutive Top 10 finishes to eight as the series heads to North Wilkesboro Speedway. There have been 91 drivers who have at least one Cup Series win with Ford, including ‘Shirtless’ Jimmy Florian, who won the first on June 25, 1950 at Dayton Speedway. Ned Jarrett has the most wins in a Ford with 43 while Bill Elliott is second with 40. Joey Logano is the winningest active driver with 35 Ford wins, which is fourth on the list.
FORD HISTORY AT NORTH WILKESBORO
Ford has 20 career wins in the NASCAR Cup Series at NWS dating back to Buck Baker in 1955 and the most recent coming in 1995 with Mark Martin. NASCAR Hall of Famer Junior Johnson (right) leads all Blue Oval drivers with four wins, including sweeping two races each in 1958 and 1965. Three additional NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series wins came in 1995 (Mike Bliss), 1996 (Martin) and 2025 (Chandler Smith).
BLANEY AND GILLILAND REACH IN-SEASON CHALLENGE SEMI’S
Ford Racing drivers Ryan Blaney and Todd Gilliland won their matchups last weekend and advanced to the semi-final round of the NASCAR Cup Series In-Season Challenge. Gilliland, the 25th seed,has defeated Daniel Suarez, Carson Hocevar and Alex Bowman and will face off against Chase Elliott. Blaney, the No. 3 seed, has beaten Josh Berry, Shane Van Gisbergen and William Byron, and now faces Christopher Bell. The winner will be crowned after the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and receive $1 million.
LOOKING AT THE STANDINGS
Blaney’s win solidified his third-place position in the overall point standings, but he has closed the gap to 41 points behind Tyler Reddick for second and 65 to leader Denny Hamlin with six races remaining in the regular season. Chris Buescher, who finished 10th last weekend, is seventh while Austin Cindric is 14th. Three-time champion Joey Logano continued his push to make the 16-driver field as his ninth-place run moved him to 17th. He trails Erik Jones for the final spot by eight points after he scored 43 points on Sunday, the third-highest total among all drivers. The Chase begins on Labor Day Weekend with the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.
RYAN BLANEY: “I know when they brought [North] Wilkesboro for the All-Star Race a handful of years ago, everyone was extremely excited. Not only in that area but I think the whole garage was excited. A lot of people in this garage area, my car chief for example, he raced at North Wilkesboro and was part of a team that raced there for a while. I think they’ve done a great job with that place of keeping a lot of history, but also revitalizing it to kind of keep up with the times. I think they’ve done a good combination of that stuff. I would never have thought five years ago we’d have a point race there, but now we are, and I think it’s great for the series, it’s great for that racetrack obviously, but it’s just good to be racing around there. I think it puts on a great show, and it’s going to be a fun one.
JOEY LOGANO: “I don’t think much will change [from the previous All Star races]. Obviously, there will be more cars on the track and the rubber build-up may be a little bit different than what we’ve had there, just because there are more cars pounding the rubber into the racetrack, so it might change the lines over time, but I don’t think it will be much different. I don’t think it’s a make-or-break race, but when you have opportunity tracks like that where you typically run well, you just have to make sure you capitalize on the opportunities that are sitting there.”
CHRIS BUESCHER: “It’s pretty remarkable to see where it’s gotten to now. It’s been such a fun racetrack to be on, whether it was the old surface or the new. It’s gonna be a fun night race, a long race as well. There are a lot of cool things coming there, but it’s really neat to see where it’s gotten to.”
ZANE SMITH: “Yeah it’s going to be a fun one for sure. It’s going to be a long one, you know, my teammates and I talked about that a bunch. I was actually a part of the test earlier this year where it was like 10 degrees, so I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be a lot different. It’ll be slick. Lanes for sure are going to move around, so we’ll see how it goes.”
LOGANO DOMINATES ALL-STAR RACE IN 2024
Joey Logano dominated the NASCAR All-Star Race in 2024 like nobody ever had, leading all but one of the 200 laps and winning the $1 million bonus for the second time in his career. Logano won the pole, thanks in part to his pit crew that put together a solid pit stop in a modified qualifying format, and never looked back once the green flag fell. He bolted to the lead on the softer tire compound that Goodyear made available, in addition to the regular tires usually used on race weekends, and controlled the race until the checkered flag.
THE LAST TIME…
The last time Ford won a points-paying race at North Wilkesboro Speedway came in 1995 when Mark Martin took the checkered flag driving for car owner Jack Roush. Martin, who led a race-high 126-of-400 laps, passed Dale Jarrett with 55 circuits to go and led a Ford charge that saw five drivers finish in the top seven spots, including Rusty Wallace (second), Ricky Rudd (fifth), Ernie Irvan (sixth) and Dale Jarrett (seventh). The victory was Martin’s second at the speedway after winning for the first time five years earlier.
CHANDLER GOING FOR NWS REPEAT
Chandler Smith was in the right place at the right time a year ago when he won the Window World 250 at North Wilkesboro Speedway. Smith passed Corey Heim and Layne Riggs for the lead on the final lap of overtime when those two got into each other to claim his second win of the season and seventh of his career. That marked the only circuit Smith led all afternoon and completed a one-two sweep for Front Row Motorsports as Riggs finished second.
RIGGS MAINTAINS SERIES LEAD
Despite a 23rd-place finish last week at Lime Rock Park, a race in which he won the pole and led a race-high 48 laps, Layne Riggs continues to lead the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series point standings. Riggs has a 44-point lead over Kaden Honeycutt with only four races to go in the regular season. Ford has three other drivers currently in the Top 10 with Chandler Smith third, Ty Majeski sixth and Ben Rhodes seventh.
FORD’S NASCAR CUP SERIES WINNERS
AT NORTH WILKESBORO
1955 – Buck Baker (2)
1957 – Fireball Roberts (1)
1958 – Junior Johnson (Sweep)
1963 – Marvin Panch (2)
1964 – Fred Lorenzen and Marvin Panch
1965 – Junior Johnson (Sweep)
1966 – Dick Hutcherson (2)
1967 – Darel Dieringer (1)
1968 – David Pearson (1)
1969 – David Pearson (2)
1979 – Bobby Allison (1)
1980 – Bobby Allison (2)
1990 – Mark Martin (2)
1992 – Davey Allison and Geoffrey Bodine
1994 – Geoffrey Bodine (2)
1995 – Mark Martin (2)
FORD’S NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES WINNERS AT NORTH WILKESBORO
1995 – Mike Bliss
1996 – Mark Martin
2025 – Chandler Smith
The Ford Mustang® coupe is America’s best-selling sports car and has a global racing presence. With Mustang-based race cars competing in international sports car competition (GT3 and GT4), NASCAR, NHRA, Formula Drift, in Supercars, at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb and in its own bespoke regional one-make series – Mustang Cup and Mustang Challenge – the platform has an unprecedented global reach. This weekend, 15 Mustang race cars are scheduled to compete across all active disciplines. Learn more about Mustang at www.FordRacing.com.
