Fresh off of winning with Joey Logano last year, Ford is looking to Texas two-step their way to their 750th NASCAR Cup Series win this Sunday.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Fresh off of winning with Joey Logano last year, Ford is looking to Texas two-step their way to their 750th NASCAR Cup Series win this Sunday.
Logano's win last year at Texas Motor Speedway was No. 744 for Ford in the Cup Series. Since then, Ford has earned five more Cup wins -- four in the final 25 races of 2025 and one in the first 10 races of 2026.
All five wins have come with Ryan Blaney, who leads all Ford drivers in the points standings. Blaney sits third in the standings after winning at Phoenix and strong efforts at Bristol, Darlington, Martinsville and Circuit of the Americas.
However, the last two weeks have been tough for him. At Talladega, he finished 37th after crashing in stage two. Then, at Kansas, he finished 24th after getting damage while struggling with a car that didn't have the speed he was looking for.
Kansas was a deja vu for not only Blaney but all of Team Penske and Wood Brothers Racing. At Kansas, Austin Cindric, Josh Berry and Joey Logano finished 12th, 27th and 30th, respectively. Las Vegas saw Logano, Blaney, Cindric and Berry finish 15th, 16th, 19th and 31st, respectively.
Las Vegas, in particular, was a stark contrast. Last year, all four cars had a chance at the win in that race -- much like Texas was a little later that season.
All that means is Sunday will about testing where their speedway program is. However, if recent Texas trends are any indication, it'll also be about surviving attrition.
“I feel like you see a little bit more of that at Texas just because it’s narrow. Everyone is fighting for a couple of lanes through one and two, so you get guys making the bold moves to get in the hole into one or something and then three and four, if you’re trying to hustle it on the top, we’re running so low that there’s that big bump in the middle of three and four, so guys kind of bust their butts over it pretty easy," Blaney said.
Blaney blames the nature of the track and how important track position is there.
"It’s hard to move forward when it’s narrower like that, so everyone knows that restarts are a huge key and when you have restarts that are a huge key at a narrower place, you’re gonna get guys fighting for position and contact," he said.
Unfortunately, Ford team RFK Racing knows about this all too well. Last year's Texas race saw Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece crash out in the final 30 laps.
Chris Buescher led the way but only finished 18th after scoring six stage points in stage one. It followed up finishes of 14th and 15th in the years before.
“Texas is like a home track curse there. We’ve been really fast and have had some wild circumstances wipe us out. As unfortunate as that is, I’m always excited to head back and think about what we’re gonna be capable of," he said.
With his performance this season on the speedway tracks, Buescher is confident in his chances heading into Texas.
"Our mile-and-a-half stuff, we’ve only got two this year under our belt, but both have been really strong, so I’m excited for that one," he said.
Buescher started 10th and finished sixth at Las Vegas before starting seventh and finishing 10th at Kansas. Because of finishes like these, he now sits seventh in the standings and inside the top-10 in the standings for this time at this point in the season. Only Blaney is higher than him in the standings entering Texas.
(Blaney's previous career-best standing after 10 races was 12th in 2025 and then 15th in 2024 and 2021.)
Buescher is also coming off of Talladega where he finished second and nearly became the one to get Ford's 750th Cup win.
"At this point, we really don’t have anything circled that we don’t feel confident being able to run well at and that’s a huge gain over where we were at early on in my career," Buescher said.
Beyond Texas, Watkins Glen and Charlotte lie ahead, giving Buescher two of his favorite track types to possibly become the winner of No. 750 if it can't be done at Texas.
Challenging him Sunday will be Keselowski, who finished seventh and second in the Texas races prior to last year. He has a stout speedway record this year too, finishing sixth at Kansas and 10th at Las Vegas.
Preece can't be ruled out, either. He finished 11th in each race and has shown at tracks like Darlington where the three RFK drivers ran 1-2-3 at one point in the race.
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s a racetrack right now that our Ford Mustang Dark Horse isn’t solid at. When it comes to short tracks, road courses, mile-and-a-halves, superspeedways we’re consistent and building a notebook. We’ve put a lot of emphasis in trying to make sure this Ford Mustang Dark Horse gets to Victory Lane," Preece said.
If Preece can win, he'd become the 92nd different driver to win a Cup race with Ford.
As for the other Ford drivers, Chad Finchum and Carl Long's Garage 66 is entered at Texas after a huge day at Talladega.
Early on in the Jack Link's 500, Finchum drove his No. 66 Ford the front and led laps for the fist time in his Cup career. He led eight laps, many of them ahead of multiple Joe Gibbs Racing Toyotas who rode behind him as he stole the show for a little bit.
While Finchum ultimately finished 28th, six laps down, getting to lead laps for himself and Long's independent effort was a huge deal for them.
A team with a similar pedigree as Garage 66, Front Row Motorsports also had a breakthrough at Talladega. Three of their cars finished in the top 11 of a Cup race for the first time in their organization's history with Zane Smith in fifth, Noah Gragson in ninth and Todd Gilliland in 11th.
Gilliland and Smith each earned their best Texas finish last year, finishing 11th and 17th respectively. Gragson earned his best Texas finish in 2024, finishing 18th when he was still with Stewart-Haas Racing.
Fitting for the Biff, who remains one of the winningest drivers in Texas history, Ford has 16 wins at the 1.5-mile track.
If someone can make that 17, they'll carry on a history first started by "Shirtless" Jimmy Florian who earned the first win for Ford in an upset at Dayton Speedway on June 25, 1950.
Fast fact: Ned Jarrett is Ford's win leader, with 43 wins. Bill Elliott is second, with 40.