Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Dollar Tree 301 Media Availabilities — New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Saturday, August 22, 2026
Ford Racing drivers Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and Ryan Preece all stopped by the New Hampshire Motor Speedway infield media center before NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying to answer questions from the media.
MEDIA AVAILABILITY PRESS CONFERENCES
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Dutch Boy Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT IS YOUR CONFIDENCE LIKE GOING INTO THE CHASE AND WHAT DO YOU THINK IT’S GOING TO TAKE TO WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP? “I think Team Penske has done a good job all year of just kind of staying in the game. On my group’s side, I feel like we’ve gotten better at some places where we’ve really needed to improve and closed the gap a little bit to the Toyotas that were really strong. So, yeah, I think we’re in a good spot at Team Penske and hitting some really good momentum right before we get going in the Chase, and hopefully we can continue that.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “I think recently, as far as the 22 itself, we’ve been able to get some good finishes back rolling again over the last couple months. It didn’t seem like it matters as to the type of track. It seems like we’ve been able to close that gap and find some consistency. We were lacking speed earlier in the year. When you lack speed, you get caught up in crashes more often and it just kind of snowballs. It seem like we’ve been able to scratch and claw and get some speed back in it. The mile-and-a-half stuff seems OK. Short tracks, obviously, is still our bread and butter and we were able to capitalize on that the last few weeks and hopefully we can do that again here in Loudon.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE LOBSTER FROM LAST YEAR’S WIN? “You can’t eat them. They’re too old. I learned that in Victory Lane. I get it tomorrow. I guess they put it on a plaque. He took a visit to the taxidermist and they put him on a nice little plaque, so I get it tomorrow. I’ll find a place in my house for him.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR LOBSTER? “I think I ate it. I don’t really remember. I think I’m the first one to put it on a plaque, I think, years and years ago because I remember when we won it back in 2009 they were like, ‘What do you want to do with the lobster? We’ll just ship it to you.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean you’re gonna ship it to me? Alive?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, alive.’ And I was like, ‘No, don’t do that.’ I don’t know what I was gonna do with this huge lobster, and so it was like, ‘Why don’t you just put it on a plaque.’ They kind of thought I was crazy the first time, but who is laughing now? Everyone does it, I guess, so there you go. I’ve got a couple on the wall at this point. It’s a good icebreaker when people come to your house and see a lobster on the wall. You have a cool story.”
THE CHASE WILL PROBABLY BE DECIDED ON 1.5-MILE TRACKS. HOW MUCH RESOURCES AND TIME IS TEAM PENSKE DEDICATING TO THAT KIND OF TRACK? “It’s constant. Everyone is always working towards finding speed at any track we go to. Sure, there’s a lot of mile-and-a-halves in there, but there’s also some of the tracks that we feel solid about, too. Those mile-and-a-halves, we’ve closed up the gap a fair amount from where we were. The 12 was able to run good at those tracks somehow before, but it seems like we can see them now a little bit too, and run up there too, so I think there’s kind of two ways to look at it. One, is if you zoom into your car in particular, whether it’s the 22 or the 12 for Ryan, but then zoomed out a little bit and looking at Team Penske as as whole, and then zoom out maybe more as Ford as a whole. Where can we be making gains? Those little things add up over time. You’re never gonna find one big thing that changes everything, but if we can work on the things together that are important to try to give it more potential, and then as a team try to work on your setups to get that little bit more of an edge. It’s just never ending. I don’t know if the focus is more so than it has been, but it’s just a constant work at it.”
NASCAR REINFORCED THE FRONT SPLITTER MORE AT NORTH WILKESBORO. HAVE YOU SEEN ANYTHING FROM THAT WHERE IT HAS HELPED? “I don’t know if it was designed just to help others. I think it was just to bring the field to where everyone was doing the same thing. There were cars that were more aggressive with that rule than others. I’m just telling you how it is. Some teams feel more comfortable pushing things past the edge a little bit and getting their hand slapped or worse, and other teams are a little bit more conservative. That was something that was obviously a decent sized needle mover for some teams. Kudos to NASCAR for finding a way to enforce it. It’s not an easy rule to enforce, obviously, so they’ve found a way to do it, so kudos to them.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – HOW MUCH DOES MOMENTUM PLAY IN THE CHASE AND TO GO INTO IT WITH A COUPLE TRACKS WHERE YOUR TEAM IS STRONG? “I’m a big believer in momentum and confidence, whether it’s in your group or yourself. They’re kind of two in the same. It is nice. We’ve had a stretch of races here closing into the Chase that our teams have really been able to step up and have had really good runs and contended for wins and win them. This weekend, we were all really strong here last year. Hopefully, that can continue and then the speedway, I don’t know what to expect at Daytona. I think everyone is kind of up in the air, but all you can do is go in with an open mind. I think momentum is a big thing, so you want it to be high and on your side when you get to the Chase, but then you still have to execute. You can have all the momentum in the world and it can break pretty easy, but it’s a positive mindset to have and I think that’s good.”
IS THERE ONE THING YOU CAN PULL FROM LAST YEAR’S WIN FOR TOMORROW, WHAT WOULD IT BE? “I think we did everything very well last year. The car was fast off the truck and I’d say one of the weaker spots in our race was short run, restart. That’s where we kind of struggled, but after 10 laps or so we really came to life, so we looked at those areas – Jonathan and I. ‘OK, how do we be a little bit better there.’ You don’t want to sacrifice later in the run because that’s where we were good, but you get late-race scenarios, it would be hard to hold some people off, I think, just how our car took off on new tires. So, you’re always trying to piece things together year to year, race to race, no matter if you were great the previous year or you were terrible, you were always trying to get a little bit better. You don’t want to do that same thing because you learn a lot over that year, so I think if that’s anything we could pinpoint from last year’s race to focus on, I think we focus on that a little bit.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – HOW WAS THE TRIP BACK FROM RICHMOND IN THE VAN? “Nothing would have been different if we finished 30th or first on the way home, I know that. I kind of laugh now. You win a race when you’re young and you’re like, ‘Let’s go party and have a good time.’ Now it’s like, my wife is like, ‘OK, I’m gonna go put the kids to bed.’ And I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll finish taking pictures down here,’ and I kept a couple with me. Then you get back and everyone is tired and you go to bed and you wake up at 6:30 the next morning and I’m like, ‘Alright, load it up.’ And everyone gets in the van. There are five kids in a van. What do you think it’s like? (laughing) Someone touched the other kid. Some spilled their water. One is hungry. One’s gotta go to the bathroom. You’ve gotta make a pit stop. We did good, though. It was a one-stop trip. That’s pretty good and that’s pretty good on the bladder mileage, in our opinion. We’ve got it figured out pretty good at this point, or as good as you can imagine. But it’s loud. It’s fun (laughing).”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – HOW DOES THIS TRACK STILL CHALLENGE YOU? “I think just year to year. You never know how teams improve year to year and everyone is working just as hard as your group to try to get better, but the good thing is these types of tracks have been pretty good to us this year. We do a great job at Team Penske on really running well at the mile and under flat tracks. We just do a good job of understanding what we need here, but we have no idea. We could be really off today. I don’t know until we get on the racetrack, but at least we’ve got the previous experience from last year and some notes on this tire through this year to where hopefully we can apply it all and be able to contend, but there are always challenges.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – “I think this track is one of the most technical, maybe the most technical oval that we go to. It rewards precision on the racetrack for the driver and you want to have a car that’s a little bit versatile, that’s a little bit more accepting to the bumps, to the banking transitions to the corner. Qualifying here today is a pretty challenging lap of trying to hit it all just right. If you overslow the entry, pick up the gas too soon, your timing gets screwed up. You overshoot it in there, you get loose. You’re a little bit too low and clip the apron, you get it loose and you’re up the racetrack. You jump over the third seam and then you’re too high. You get stuck on the seam. You’ve just got to be so precise around this racetrack to make a fast lap here, so qualifying, to me, takes a lot to hit it right on. It’s hard to ever feel like you just nailed the lap perfect. There’s always a little bit of something here and there. It’s just a pretty technical place.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – “And then you can throw everything out of the book when it’s gonna rain tomorrow. It’ll be a whole new race.” JOEY INTERJECTS: “It’s not gonna rain.” RYAN: “I hope it doesn’t” JOEY: “I hope it doesn’t (laughing).”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – YOU RACED ON A DAMP TRACK HERE A COUPLE YEARS AGO. WHAT’S IT LIKE IF IT RAINS TOMORROW TO RE-LEARN A TRACK IN THOSE CONDITIONS AND THEN AS IT DRIES? “Well, if that does happen tomorrow at least we’ve had experience on this racetrack in the rain. I remember two years ago when it did rain. I think me and Reddick were on the front row and you’re like, ‘I’m gonna drive in as far as you, maybe a little bit deeper. I just don’t know.’ But now we’ve had that experience with it, just trying to see where the lines go, how it dries out. This place actually, when it did rain, it dried out fairly quick. I don’t think we ever got back on slicks, though. It was wet tires to the end of that race, but just trying to figure out where are the spots that are drying up. You don’t want to run in the dry too much because then you’re gonna just destroy the soft wet weather tires, but it is nice to have some experience if it does rain tomorrow, like two years ago when we had zero laps in the rain here and just trying to figure it out on the fly. That stuff is pretty fun and challenging, but experience is also nice when you’re sitting behind the wheel.”
WHAT WILL DAYTONA BE LIKE MENTALLY WITH THE UNKNOWNS OF THE PACKAGE? “Make one lap in qualifying and then fire it off in the race and see what happens. I’ve always tried to be open-minded on things, like try not to expect too much of when I don’t know 100 percent about it. I think I’ve just always tried to make myself more versatile that way and not try to get too stuck in my ways, but I don’t know. I go back and forth on it could be a massive, wildly different change, or it could be, ‘It’s not as much of a change as I thought.’ I don’t know what to expect, but we’re gonna be the first to find out, I’ll tell you that. So, we’ll see. What do you think, Joe?”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – “I don’t know what to think yet, Ryan. Thanks for asking. I’m curious to see how much handling comes into play. Typically, even with the added downforce that we had before, coming off of turn four is kind of the trouble point, where cars would kind of slip up and those kind of things. I’m assuming it’s gonna look more like the old Daytona years ago before they repaved it – a little bit more that direction. Or like Atlanta, where handling is gonna come into play to some extent. I just don’t know at what point in the run does that happen. Are we packed up for the first 10 and then you start to see the cream rise to the top? You start to see the best cars start to move their way through the field. I don’t know. Maybe. I kind of think it’s gonna go that direction. It only makes sense if you’re taking grip away. Sure, the car’s gonna handle worse, so, like Ryan said, we’ll be the first to know, but we ain’t gonna know before anybody else, either because one lap of qualifying is gonna tell us nothing. So, I don’t know.”
RYAN BLANEY CONTINUED – HOW CLOSELY ARE YOU MONITORING POINTS THE NEXT TWO WEEKS WITH THE BATTLE FOR SECOND STILL UP FOR GRABS? “A little bit. I look at the points once or twice a week, usually the night after the race to see where everyone is at, and then I remind myself where everyone is at before the weekend comes. They don’t consume my whole race, but I notice where those guys are running just because we are in the fight with those guys for the second spot, but it doesn’t change our race. We won’t strategize our race around the 45 or the 54. We strategize to try to win the race and then the points stuff takes care of itself. You do know that and we do know from second to fourth is a decent chunk of points, so that’s goal number one outside of winning the race the next two weeks – try to stay ahead of those two guys.”
RYAN PREECE, No. 60 Mohawk Northeast Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS HOW RFK HAS PERFORMED OVER THIS STRETCH OF WILKESBORO, IOWA AND THIS SHORT TRACK STRETCH? “I felt like it was definitely an opportunity as well. North Wilkesboro went well for us just because of the race and the way that race played out. Iowa I thought was a struggle for us in general, but kind of gave us like, ‘Hey, we need to figure something out here.’ And we went into Richmond and, to be honest with you, we qualified up front and ran up front and then an untimely caution during a pit cycle ruined our day, so we didn’t go to Richmond and run 25th to 30th and go back after that like, ‘Hey, man. We need to completely re-do everything we’re doing at short tracks.’ So, I felt like we took a step in the right direction after Iowa for Richmond, and I feel like we’re gonna take another step when we come here today, so there’s a lot of things I’m looking forward to. Today, I was just in the trailer and Derrick said, ‘We need a home run right now.’ So, that’s the plan.”
DO YOU HAVE A NUMBER OF POINTS YOU WANT TO BE WITHIN REACH GOING TO DAYTONA? “Personally, I think no matter what when we go to Daytona we’re on offense. I would much rather be in Chris’ position or somebody who is 60 points above going into Daytona because it’s really gonna take a Hail Mary or a massive grand slam for somebody to go out and knock you out of the playoffs at that point, but, realistically, if we’re within 10 to 15 of Shane or Ross and going into that race we without a doubt have a chance. Because they’re gonna be going into that race with a mindset of, ‘Hey, we need to finish and not put ourselves in jeopardy,’ which you give up stage points and the next thing you know by the end of stage two you’re like, if the person goes out and does what we’ve done in the past of getting a lot of stage points, it puts them in an oh, boy mode. It’s a challenge because you’ve got your owner’s points and that’s 25 points behind Shane, and then you’ve got the driver’s points and that’s 50, so there are two different chases going on for us. For me, I love this place. It’s my home track and I feel like we can definitely take a big bite into that points difference that Shane has on us. We came in with the mindset of trying to go for it all.”
WHAT DOES A HOME RUN THIS WEEKEND LOOK LIKE? “Qualifying up front. A lot of stage points. Contending for a win, if not winning. Without a doubt, I feel like Penske has shown that the short track program for Ford is there. Last week, Austin had a great points day in which he needed, so, for us, I really like the direction that we’re trying to go to of, ‘hey, we need to run well.’ That’s tough to have because when you do run well, you don’t have those conversations of ‘hey, we ran really great,’ but to the flip side, this is an important one. Qualifying. Practice. That all really helps the beginning of the race and I think you guys have seen you can go out and have a ton of stage points in stage one and stage two and finish 12th or 10th and that’s a massive points day. So, you combine that with if Shane has a little bit of bad luck, yeah, there’s definitely a chance. Look at Joey. He’s 150 points from where he was six races ago.”
HOW CLOSELY WILL YOU MONITOR THE 97? “I’m not. Control the things that you can control and don’t worry about the things you can’t At the end of the day it’s much like Ryan (Blaney) just said. You get out of the car, you kind of look at it and say, ‘OK, whatever,’ and then you move on.”
YOU MADE YOUR CUP DEBUT HERE. WHAT MAKES NEW HAMPSHIRE SO HARD COMPARED TO OTHER TRACKS FOR YOUR FIRST START? “Everybody’s situation on when they do their first start is much different. Mine was Tommy Baldwin and Premium Motorsports at the time, and I think, to be honest with you, trying to finish in the top 25 or top 20 would have been really difficult, but New Hampshire, I feel like for us New Englanders, is a big deal because when you go to most racetracks – Texas Motor Speedway, it’s probably a big deal if you’re in Texas, or Daytona is Florida. But for New England, it’s Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine. It’s a whole bunch of states that just get around whoever is from New England – the sports team that’s from New England. We’re very passionate about our sports, but going back to answer your question on why it’s difficult, this place is tough. It’s flat. It’s fast. I’ve actually seen, and I feel like this track has widened out over time. It used to be when the days of Jeff Gordon and Jeff Burton, there’s what we call the flat, which would be technically you would think the bottom lane, and then there’s a little bit of banking and everybody used to run around there. Now, people are running on that middle or whatever lower lane, and then going all the way above to the different color asphalt, so it’s definitely changed.”
YOU ARE IN THE MODIFIED RACE LATER TODAY. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU TO GET ACCLIMATED BACK TO THAT TYPE OF VEHICLE? “It takes half a lap, but, to be honest with you, the setup, the tires, all those things, it just changes and to try and keep up with that. Earlier this year, I did one race at New Smyrna. We qualified well and ran really well. We led a lot of laps and that was when everybody first switched over to this American Racer tire. I haven’t done one since and, clearly, I felt like our car drove good in practice. We were top five and going into qualifying we qualified 21st, so whatever I used to do for qualifying adjustments doesn’t work for that tire and that’s what makes it tough going in and racing against guys that are regularly racing that series and on that tire because you pick up on little things to help your speed. My hopes for today are to contend and try and win that race because this place has always been special to me and I love coming here and racing with these guys. My car drives really good, so I’m hoping we can move forward.”
WHAT IS IT LIKE PREPARING FOR A WEEKEND LIKE THIS? “The prep for the Cup side is completely different from the modified side. Luckily, my father gave me a big head start when I came in and kind of was working on it on Wednesday, but I just like the process. When it comes to preparing for the modified race is making sure my car is as low as possible and as fast as possible and that all the little details of what it takes to make a fast modified are there. With the Cup car, it’s how important is qualifying gonna be, which it’s always important, but track position is a big thing, and then just work on the things you can control. I feel like from a restart perspective and being aggressive, it’s kind of easy for me, especially here knowing all the lanes, where the grip is and where it’s not. I feel pretty good about that, but just being home. It’s a different feeling. Seeing all the familiar faces. The weather. It feels nice to walk out of the hotel and not feel like I’m hitting a wall of hot air.”
WHAT CAN RACE FANS WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN A MODIFIED RACE EXPECT THAT THEY WON’T SEE TOMORROW? “Drafting. Slingshot passes. Hopefully, there are a lot of passes for the lead in the Cup cars, but those cars are so draggy that when you’re out front you’re almost like a sitting duck, like when we’re at Atlanta. So you get a lot of passes and a lot of cool stuff like that. I want to say from a driver’s point of view, the modifieds are just a lot of fun to race in because you’re typically not gonna watch somebody just walk away with the lead and drive away. It’s very difficult to do that, so it’s one that I’ve been looking forward to for a couple weeks. Hopefully, I can dice it up with them who were fast yesterday.”
WHAT ARE THE MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES STAND OUT TO YOU AT THIS PLACE? “Actually, it’s funny you asked that because I had one this morning when I was walking through the D/O lot to head into the Cup garage, Chad Knaus was driving by me and it brought back a memory of when NASCAR and the Whelen Modified Tour was doing the All-Star event here, and I was bringing the modified, I think it was 2013, right around then. I brought the modified, drove it up on the open trailer to do the announcement, and Chad Knaus and those guys were testing, and it was just me unloading the car and they’re all kind of there just looking at it like, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool.’ So, it just brought back that memory. The grind. I don’t know. I’ve spent a lot of time here. I’ve loved everything about this place and it would be nice to have a win in the Cup Series here.”
WHAT IS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT AT THIS TRACK? “It’s hard to pick just one. One was probably nerfing Newman out of the way for the win with that modified. I remember feeling his arms grabbing around my neck in a joking way, but he had some big hands. I think one for me on the national side was when I did that first race in the 20 and it went really well. Those are the things that stick with you. I’ve definitely had a lot of memories, especially as a kid and throughout many stages of my life, and it would be nice to add one this weekend.”
