Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Freeway Insurance 500 Qualifying — Phoenix Raceway
Saturday, October 17, 2026
BLANEY CAPTURES PHOENIX POLE AS TEAM PENSKE CLAIMS FRONT ROW
- Ryan Blaney won the pole for tomorrow’s Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
- The pole is Blaney’s 17th all-time and fifth of the season, which is a career best.
- Joey Logano, who won the pole in the Phoenix spring race, qualified second.
- This marks the seventh pole for Ford in 2026 and 718th all-time.
Ford Qualifying Results:
1st – Ryan Blaney
2nd – Joey Logano
9th – Josh Berry
13th – Todd Gilliland
15th – Austin Cindric
17th – Chris Buescher
18th – Brad Keselowski
20th – Zane Smith
26th – Ryan Preece
30th – Noah Gragson
RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Richmond Ford Mustang Dark Horse – POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE – WITH LARSON QUALIFYING 22ND, HOW BIG OF AN OPPORTUNITY IS THIS? “Yeah, I didn’t know he qualified there. It’s big. It’s big to start the race up towards the front and try to get some stage points and stuff like that. A good pit stall, so that’s really important just from our side of just putting yourself up towards the front early in the race to get some points early and then just try to keep your track position. Job one done today, so I’m proud of everybody for doing a good job today and taking that first step, and then a whole new challenge tomorrow. Hopefully, we can keep going.”
HOW ON THE EDGE IS IT WHEN DOING A LAP LIKE THAT? “You’re on the edge. I feel like most qualifying laps you feel like you’re kind of on the edge if you hit it right. Sometimes I get done with a qualifying lap and I’m like, ‘I underdrove it bad,’ but I feel like if you hit it right, and I feel like we hit it pretty close today, you’re definitely on edge. Your car is stuck and doing things better than others who might not qualify as fast, but you are on edge. You’re trying to find the limit and it’s a fine line too because you only get one shot at it and if you mess it up, you don’t look good and you have to start in the back, especially here. We picked up seven-tenths I think from where I practiced on your fast lap. That’s a big pickup here, so that’s the cool thing about qualifying is you jump right in from old tires. Heck, even the end of a long run at the end of practice I think I ran like a 28.2, so you’re picking up multiple seconds from the last lap on track. That part is kind of fun when you can hit it right and you kind of just guess the speed and the grip for that one lap.”
YOU HAVE TO CUT THE DOGLEG TO MAKE TIME, CORRECT? “Yeah. I got the pole by half-a-tenth. If I didn’t cut the dogleg, I wouldn’t have gotten the pole. It’s at least half-a-tenth, maybe a tenth if you stay up on the racetrack.”
WHAT IS THE DEGREE OF PAIN WHEN YOU HIT? “It’s not ideal, but I’ve had worse for sure. People are like, ‘Why don’t you just run down there every lap if it’s faster?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, it kind of beats the car up.’ You never want to go down there, it’s just kind of a necessity in qualifying and then obviously restarts and then race scenarios sometimes if you need an extra five or six feet getting into one, I think it’s big. There are probably three or four, there are two big ones getting down on it and then you hit two or three big ones coming back. It’s not ideal, but you’ve got to do it.”
WHAT DOES PRACTICE AT THIS TRACK MEAN? “I thought the track really moved around a lot today. The beauty of a 50-minute practice here with two sets of tires the track is gonna kind of get worn out on the bottom. It’s gonna lay a bunch of rubber down on the bottom lanes, which kind of forces you to move around, which is great for the race because we run all around in the race, so you get an idea of what your car is doing. It is nice to have a full practice here. It got way up in turns one and two and guys were running the third and fourth lane and three and four, too. So, it’s nice to just have a bigger notebook as opposed to usually 25-minute sessions as before on one set of tires, it didn’t really move around a lot. It just doesn’t lay enough rubber down to make you have to search for grip, so the good part about longer practices is you get more of a feel for what the track is actually gonna race like.”
DID YOU NOTICE ANY WET SPOTS ON THE TRACK? “No. It dried up pretty quick.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS THAT FIRST PIT STALL, AND HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR PIT CREW? “I think stall one here is really important, just kind of where the camera is compared to where the stall is, your box is. It seems like the camera is not super, super close, but it’s kind of on the shorter end. Each track is a little different, so that part is nice, and these boxes are pretty slick. I feel like here and Vegas are the slickest boxes that we go to and it’s nice because you kind of leave your box straight. You don’t have to kind of curl around because you’re always trying to get out of the pit boxes. Even if there is no one in front of you, you want to get to asphalt quicker just because you can throttle up a little bit more and get to your pit road speed. Number one pit stall, you can just go straight so you’re not angling out trying to get grip. You find grip initially going straight, which is ideal. My pit crew, I feel like they’ve done a really good job. We made the swap at the beginning of the Chase with the 2 crew and those guys have been really good, and my old guys have been really good, too. I feel like they’ve put together a really good Chase, so they’ve really grown a lot and I feel like we’ve been really solid in that department on all aspects on all cars.”
YOU ARE GOING TO BE THE GUY BEING CHASED TOMORROW. ANY DISADVANTAGE OF NOT BEING ABLE TO LEARN HOW YOUR CAR WILL DRIVE IN TRAFFIC? “No. It’s a lot easier starting at the front. It’s a lot easier. The traffic piece, yes, you kind of get more of an idea in traffic. It’s two-fold, though. If you start 15th, you’re gonna get a great idea of what your car does in traffic and how to adjust to that, but you don’t know what it’s gonna do if you do get to the front in clean air. Here it’s kind of vice versa, but I will say to kind of add to it is that you’re gonna get to lapped cars eventually and you’re gonna understand what your car does in dirty air. You kind of get the best of all worlds when you start up front. I’d much rather start up front and deal with when I get to traffic as opposed to having to come through traffic.”
BLANEY PIT ROAD POLE-WINNING INTERVIEW – HOW WAS THAT LAP? “I’m proud of the lap, for sure. The car did everything it needed to do and stuck when it needed to, so overall it was a really good lap. I’m not the best qualifier at this place. I feel like I race better than I qualify, so I’m really proud of the effort by all the 12 boys for just working on, ‘ok, how do we get qualifying speed and what do we need to do to get better,’ so I appreciate them. Menards, Richmond, Ford for what they do. It’s a great place to start for the weekend. A Penske front row. That’s awesome and hopefully we have something for them tomorrow.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR CHANCES? “It’s what we can do is show up to the racetrack prepared, prepare the best we can through the week and that’s really all that we can do, just do the best job that you can. I’m really fortunate I get to work with a great group of guys on this 12 team and a great group at Team Penske that just put their head down and no matter what situation, you just go to work and put your best foot forward. I thought our car was pretty decent in practice. It had good speed. We’ll keep tinkering on it a little bit. It will definitely be different tomorrow. It’s gonna be full sun tomorrow, a little bit warmer as today was a little bit different. There was a little shade. It’s pretty cool outside, so the track will change a lot. Hopefully, we can plan accordingly for that.”
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Hunt Brothers Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WITH FOUR RACES TO GO, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR SITUATION? “Pretty desperate. If we want to win the championship, this race in particular is one that we have circled and has been good for us. If we’re gonna make up 90-plus points in four races, you have to win. It’s a must-win scenario and probably multiple times to do that, so if we want to win this whole thing and do it without wishing bad luck upon somebody, then we’re going to have to win.”
IS THERE ANYTHING DIFFERENT ON HOW YOU APPROACH A MUST-WIN OR FEELING THERE’S A RACE YOU SHOULD WIN? IS IT JUST THE PHRASING OF WORDS? “It’s just the phrasing. Nothing really changes. Maybe the strategy changes as far as risk profile and what you’re willing to risk to win. Those type of things because you brought up the word desperate. Desperate people do desperate things and we’re at that desperate level. It feels to me a bit of a cutoff race type scenario. That’s where we are and a lot of that is just due to our regular season and starting too far back in the Chase. We’ve proven we can make it up. We did it in the first three races and we got right to it, so the facts are that Larson has had an incredible run right now. We’re really not that far back from second, but to get to the lead and win this thing, we’ve kind of got our back up against the wall.”
AUSTIN CINDRIC, No. 2 Discount Tire Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “It was kind of an odd day. I think the weather definitely made an impact on track conditions. I wasn’t quite pleased with our practice session and obviously not quite as good as what we were in the spring in qualifying either, so I think we’ve got a little bit of work to do overnight. Overall, I feel like we have a pretty strong notebook here, so there’s more to be had in the race.” COULD THE TRUCK RACE HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE ON TRACK CONDITIONS? “I just think temperature and overcast probably has a larger piece to do with it than anything else, especially when we had the rain earlier. I felt like our track evolved a lot during practice. I think it’s a fair thought, but probably not what today was.”
