INDIANAPOLIS
Friday, July 24 — NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, 8 p.m. ET (FS1)
Sunday, July 26 — NASCAR Cup Series, 2 p.m. ET (TNT)
Ford Racing heads to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend on the heels of a NASCAR sweep, where Joey Logano won the Cup race and Chandler Smith took the Truck Series event at North Wilkesboro. The manufacturer is assured of another victory on Sunday as Ryan Blaney and Todd Gilliland compete against each other for the In-Season Challenge championship and $1 million bonus.
BLANEY TO MAKE 400TH CAREER CUP START
Ryan Blaney will reach a milestone this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway when he makes his 400th NASCAR Cup Series start. Blaney, who has a pair of wins this season and sits third in the point standings, made his debut on May 10, 2014 at Michigan International Speedway driving a third Team Penske Ford entry. That marked the first of two races that season before he moved to the Wood Brothers in 2015 and ran a limited schedule. Blaney has 19 career Cup Series victories and won the 2023 championship.
LOGANO MOVES TO THIRD ON ALL-TIME FORD WIN LIST
Joey Logano’s win at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Sunday night marked his 50th career NASCAR victory with Team Penske and Ford, but it also moved him into sole possession of third place on Ford’s all-time NASCAR Cup Series win list. Logano now has 36 Ford victories, one more than Mark Martin, and trails only Ned Jarrett (43) and Bill Elliott (40). The Connecticut native has 38 series wins overall and extended his streak of at least one victory to 15 straight seasons.
ALL-TIME FORD CUP WIN LIST
Ned Jarrett – 43
Bill Elliott – 40
Joey Logano – 36
Mark Martin – 35
Dale Jarrett – 30
David Pearson – 29
Brad Keselowski – 27
Fred Lorenzen – 26
Junior Johnson – 26
Kevin Harvick – 25
AN ALL-FORD IN-SEASON CHALLENGE FINAL
Ryan Blaney and Todd Gilliland both advanced to the NASCAR In-Season Challenge championship this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway after winning their individual battles on Sunday night. Gilliland picked a good time to post his second top 10 finish of the season as his eighth place run allowed him to eliminate Chase Elliott (17th). Blaney, despite having to start from the rear after an unapproved adjustment, finished 11th to defeat Christopher Bell (19th). As a result, the $1 million bonus for winning the In-Season Challenge will go to whichever driver finishes the best in the Brickyard 400.
KESELOWSKI AND THE BRICKYARD
Brad Keselowski is the only active Ford driver who has won the Brickyard 400 on the oval, taking the checkered flag in 2018 while driving for Team Penske. Keselowski passed Denny Hamlin coming to the white flag off turn four and won going away to give Roger Penske his first NASCAR Cup Series win at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. In 13 career starts, Keselowski has one win, four top-five and seven top-10 finishes.
400TH POINTS WIN FOR RYE IN NASCAR
Just a couple months after Doug Yates celebrated his 450th career NASCAR victory, his Roush Yates Engines team is doing the same following Joey Logano’s win Sunday at North Wilkesboro. That’s because it represented the organization’s 400th points win in NASCAR’s top three series combined. Since opening up for business in 2004, RYE has captured its most wins in the Cup Series (208) followed by the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (165) and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (27).
RYAN BLANEY: “That place has always been special in general, let alone in our organization. When you sign up to race for Mr. Penske, you know that that’s an important place to him. It’s not talked about in the shop, it’s just known, and now that he’s owned the Speedway for the last handful of years it’s even more – I wouldn’t say pressure to win there, but it’s more of a known in our building that if you can win at the boss’ track, that means a lot to him. It would be the coolest thing to share a Victory Lane moment and kiss the bricks with Roger. That would be a heck of an experience.”
JOEY LOGANO: “Indy is one of those places where a lot of times your aggressive racer excels, whether that’s on restarts or strategy. If you’re willing to risk a lot, you can find yourself in position to win it. That same person can also be on the other side of it where they’re torn up or miss the strategy completely and finish 25th, but it is definitely a place where you’re willing to take some risks because, one, it’s Indy, but, two, it’s very challenging to make passes later on in the run, so you’ve got to get them while you can.”
CHRIS BUESCHER: “We have really big expectations going to Indy. We’ve been really fast there and we just haven’t had the full day put together yet, but our potential is extremely high. I’ve been looking forward to that one, much like Pocono or Michigan, for a long time this year. Those are places we’ve had a lot of speed as well. We’re ready for that one. The 6 team got to do the test there not too terribly long ago, so we certainly have a little bit of fresh info, but it doesn’t seem like a whole lot changed for that one.”
MUSTANG WINS BRICKYARD IN FIRST ATTEMPT
Mustang has been a staple of the Ford Motor Company passenger car lineup since 1964 and, just like a bottle of fine wine, it only gets better with age. When the iconic sports car made its NASCAR Cup Series debut at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2019, it didn’t disappoint. Kevin Harvick set the tone by putting his No. 4 Mobil 1 Mustang on the pole, and he continued that during the race as he led 118-of-160 laps to win by a whopping 6.118 seconds. That capped a big day for Ford, which saw Joey Logano finish second and six Mustangs total in the top 10.
FORD LOOKING TO RUN IRP WIN STREAK TO FOUR
The last three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park have ended with a Ford F-150 in Victory Lane. One year ago, it was Layne Riggs who led 160-of-200 laps, including the final 55, to post his fourth career victory. Prior to that, Ty Majeski registered back-to-back triumphs in 2023 and 2024. His victory two years ago served as a springboard to the series championship as he won the following week at Richmond and then the Championship Race a few weeks later in Phoenix.
FORD AND FRONT ROW GOING FOR THREE STRAIGHT
Ford Racing has won six NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races this season, including two straight and four of the last six. All of those victories have come from the Front Row Motorsports duo of Chandler Smith and Layne Riggs. Smith is coming off a dominating performance at North Wilkesboro Speedway, where he set a record for the biggest margin of victory at a short track in series history (8.479 seconds) and won for the second year in a row. Riggs, who leads the point standings, has captured the pole each of the last two weeks and won at Lime Rock Park for his fourth victory of the year.
2026 TURNING INTO A SEASON TO REMEMBER
As mentioned above, Ford Racing has won six races so far this season, which is one more than each of the last two seasons. In fact, one more NCTS victory will mark the most for Ford in a single season since it won eight times in 2006. The all-time record for the manufacturer is 12, which was done in back-to-back seasons (1999 and 2000). Greg Biffle is Ford’s all-time NCTS winner with 16 while Riggs is second with nine.
FORD NASCAR CUP SERIES WINNERS
AT THE BRICKYARD
1996 – Dale Jarrett (Oval)
1997 – Ricky Rudd (Oval)
1999 – Dale Jarrett (Oval)
2018 – Brad Keselowski (Oval)
2019 – Kevin Harvick (Oval)
2020 – Kevin Harvick (Oval)
2023 – Michael McDowell (Road Course)
FORD’S NASCAR CRAFTSMAN TRUCK SERIES WINNERS AT IRP
1999 – Greg Biffle
2002 – Terry Cook
2003 – Carl Edwards
2006 – Rick Crawford
2023 – Ty Majeski
2024 – Ty Majeski
2025 – Layne Riggs
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, 36 Mustang race cars are scheduled to compete across all active disciplines. Learn more about Mustang at www.FordRacing.com.
