Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Freeway Insurance 500 Media Availability — Phoenix Raceway
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is going for a NASCAR Cup Series season sweep at Phoenix Raceway after winning here in March. Blaney, who is fifth in the Chase standings and 85 points out of the lead, held a Q&A session in the infield media center before today’s practice and qualifying session.
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU’VE WON THE LAST TWO TIMES HERE. WHAT MAKES IT DIFFICULT FROM A COMPETITIVE STANDPOINT TO GO BACK-TO-BACK AT A TRACK? “I think things change through the year. Teams find new things and teams evolve. I think that’s what makes this series really competitive is you have great teams and drivers and crew chiefs and engineers that sit down and do their homework and try to figure out when you do go to a track for the second time in the same season, how can we better? It doesn’t matter if you ran 20th or you won the race, you’re always trying to find new ways to be better and improve. Like this weekend, you can’t show up the same way we did in the spring just because you learn things through the year that you think are a better direction as an organization, and so while it’s hard to go away from things you know work well, if you’ve found success doing things a little bit of a different way, you want to keep heading in that direction and you hope that they continue to work. It just shows you the competitiveness of the Cup Series and how hard it is no matter if it’s a good track for you or not, running well is one thing but then trying to win the race is obviously incredibly difficult, so it just shows the level that everyone is at here in this garage area.”
IS IT A GIVEN NOW THAT EVERYONE WILL TAKE TWO TIRES AT THE END OF THIS RACE? “Yeah, the last two here have been won from rights that we’ve done. I think it’s all situational. It’s situational on how many laps are left in the race, how many laps you have on your stuff already, where you’re running. I feel like sometimes it’s hard to do two if you’re the leader and you’re like, ‘Our car is best on four. We’re leading this race. We don’t want to do two and everyone do four behind us and we kind of lose that way.’ So, it’s just two different ways to look at it. I think all that stuff is just certain scenarios that we did at that certain time that worked out for us. I think all of that is you never know what’s gonna happen. If you have 40 laps on your stuff, 50 laps on your stuff, I don’t know if you’d take two. Maybe if that’s like a Hail Mary and you’re running 10th or 12th or something like that. I think it’s just in the moment and what crew chiefs decide.”
DO YOU FEEL THE SLIGHT CHANGE IN SPOILER WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE AT TALLADEGA? “I don’t know if it’ll make a huge difference. A half-inch on the spoiler is not a ton. It’s definitely not the jump we made going into Daytona, but I think it’s the right direction. I keep thinking, ‘Just keep taking spoiler away from it.’ I think it’s a good thing – make the cars a little bit more difficult to drive, try to help get a little bit of separation to where you can kind of shoot through the middle and stuff like that. I thought it was a step in the right direction at Daytona, for sure, and I think it’ll be better at Talladega. I’m curious to see what they do next year. I’d like for them to keep going down a little bit on the spoiler and maybe putting a little horsepower back in it, but I think it’s the right direction but I don’t think sitting in the car I’ll be able to notice a ton with just another half-inch of spoiler off of it.”
HASSLER HAS A MINDSET OF A MUST-WIN THIS WEEK. DO YOU SHARE THAT SENTIMENT? “Yeah, a little bit. It’s definitely getting down to that time. You’ve only got four left and the points that we’re out, I think you do kind of have to treat it as a must-win. It’s gonna be really hard if you only gain four or five or six points on him this weekend. You know that’s hard, so you need to try to take a big chunk with the 20 bonuses and then you hope you outpoint him in the stages too and just keep chipping away. So, I would kind of categorize this as a big championship moment weekend for our team of if we can win this weekend, I think we can hopefully keep chipping away at it. If we don’t win this weekend, the job is exponentially harder going into the next three weeks. You try to win every week and I think coming here being a part of the Championship 4 in those years that was kind of the mindset like, ‘We’ve probably got to win the race to win the championship.’ We ran second when we won the championship in ‘23, but you treat it as like a must-win, so I feel like we’ve been in some of those situations before. I look at Martinsville in ‘24, that was a must-win for us to get here and I thought we faced that challenge head-on and did a very good job, so we’ve been in these spots before. Hopefully, we have some experience and we can lean on that.”
THIS IS THE SECOND-BEST SIX-RACE STRETCH IN THE FINAL 10 RACES THAT LARSON IS ON. HOW DO YOU VIEW HIM NOW? ARE YOU WAITING FOR SOMETHING HAPPEN? “No, I’m treating it as they’re not gonna have a mistake and we have to go win races to catch him. It could go either way. Everyone is like, ‘Oh, the law of averages, he’s gonna have a bad weekend,’ but they might not and if they don’t, then props, 100 percent. You did a heck of a job. You really whooped up on everybody, so that’s my mindset is they are not going to have a bad week and we have to capitalize on it if he fifths it out the rest of the way, we have to go win a couple at least to try to get there. That’s where our mindset is at. We’re not waiting on him to make a mistake. We want to capitalize on running well and winning races.”
WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE AT THIS TRACK? “I think the two ends are really different. We talk about that a lot when we come here. I think the two ends are really different. Obviously, with one and two super flat, long, kind of how do you manage the apron, how do you manage moving up the track? That corner down there is really, really wide. It’s wider than people think as far as just lane options. I’ve always tried to get my car to work well on the apron at kind of utilizing the paint with my right side tires. Some people try to utilize it with their lefts, some people with their rights and then trying to move up the track and play around with that. Three and four is just kind of the sharper, way more brake pressure type corner. You’re always loose into that corner, always turns the center terrible and always is loose driving up the hill. So, it’s just how do you balance platforming those two ends because they’re very different with how each one takes load. How do you utilize your downshift, your downshift into fourth in one and two, and sometimes you’re fifth to fourth down on the back on new tires, but older tires you just stay in fourth. That’s big. How do you play restarts. Restarts here are always a big topic of I wouldn’t say chaos, but just opportunity, a good opportunity or a bad opportunity, however you want to put it, so trying to manage that. It’s just been a place that’s worked well with us, but I feel like we’ve done a good job of trying to understand what works on both ends of the racetrack and kind of what do we need in practice and then leading into the race I think we’ve done a really good job in past years of doing that together as a team.”
DO YOU FEEL LESS PRESSURE GOING INTO TALLADEGA BECAUSE YOU’RE TRYING TO GAIN POINTS WHILE THOSE IN FRONT OF YOU MIGHT BE TRYING TO PROTECT? “No, I wouldn’t think so, and I can only speak from my seat. I can’t speak from the people who are in other spots, whether they’re first, second in points or whatever of trying to protect as opposed to those of us who are trying to gain. I have just tried to approach these speedways as big opportunities and not trying to think about ‘this could be an awful day or not,’ just try to go control the race and lead laps and have a good day. I do think there’s a little bit of mindsets there that could be different. I always look at and I only say this because I’m a Buckeye and Ohio State did this with Texas earlier this year, they got up early and then they started to protecting that second half and Texas came back and won. You play different when you’re protecting, but I don’t think our mindset changes, at least from this 12 team of you’re always kind of on attack mode, whether you’re 85 points behind like we are or 85 points ahead. You always just go try to do the best job that you can and I think that’s the best way – just try not to defer from what you usually try to do in your job from each weekend.”
HOW HAVE YOU HAD TO GET BETTER SINCE THE LAST TIME HERE OR EVEN SINCE NEW HAMPSHIRE? “I think you’re always having to get better from a car side and a driver’s side. There are things you do poorly even if you win the race at a certain racetrack, at least I look at it as, ‘Well, I could have done better here.’ I could have done a better job at my approach, my mindset, whether it’s behind the wheel or just kind of approaching what I think I need before the race or through the race. So, yeah, you’re always trying to progress and look forward and look ahead and try to find different ways to improve no matter if you’re great or terrible at a previous place. It’s very important, like I said earlier, we’re not even the same as what we were here in the spring. You’re always trying to go in directions you think the team is better and it’s the same as the driver. You’re always trying to refine your skill set and change ways to improve behind the wheel.”
WHERE CAN YOU IMPROVE? “I’d say for us personally like short run pace, like restarts, has kind of been not an Achilles heel for us, but a place where we can improve. I think that was a little bit of an emphasis point for us is how do we get a little bit better for the first three to five laps of a run.”
DO YOU FEEL MORE PRESSURE TO GET IT DONE AT A PLACE LIKE THIS WHERE YOU’VE HISTORICALLY BEEN ABLE TO WIN? “No, I don’t feel anymore pressure with what you described. I take it as it’s a compliment that people are trying to chase you, so that means you’re doing something well. So, I don’t go into places where we’ve run well and are like, ‘Man, don’t mess this up. We always run good here. It’s gonna look bad if we don’t run good.’ I just look at it as, ‘Hey, we have a great starting point. Let’s continue to build off of this and be confident in unloading.’ I think it’s better when people are chasing you and kind of watching your car through practice of what your car does really well. That’s flattering.”
