Ford Mustangs running in the Cup Series can be found at the top of short-track racing leaderboards more often than not. However, that hasn’t been the case in tracks that are a mile and a half or more in length. The carmaker and its partners set out to work on this issue over the past several months and it appears they’ve finally managed to better their racing product to suit intermediates and longer tracks.
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Last Sunday’s race in Pocono saw defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney reach victory riding his No. 12 Ford Mustang Dark Horse. He was elated to do so as he quipped in his post-race interview that his team is finally able to compete with Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing on longer tracks courtesy of the homework it did over weeks past.
He said, “I feel like we’ve found a lot of stuff. I talked last month about short tracks. I think our short track program is fantastic and we need to work on the mile-and-a-half plus race tracks. We come today to a big two-and-a-half-miler and win it.” Though the race unfolded to prioritize strategy making a lot, Blaney had been able to match the Toyotas and Chevys on raw speed as well.
This surprised veteran reporters Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi as it did everyone else. Breaking down Ford’s resurgence on their podcast, The Teardown, Bianchi noted how Brad Keselowski had won at the 1.36-mile Darlington Raceway and Chris Buescher had come inches within of winning at the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway. He believes these are glimpses of a dominance waiting to come.
Can Ford win at Indianapolis using a recent turn of form?
Talking about how he was quite taken aback by how the race in Pocono turned out, Gluck said, “For Ford to win on one of these bigger tracks with Indy coming up, with Michigan in a couple weeks after the Olympic break all that stuff on… Like, okay, Ford. You have my attention now. Because I thought this was going to be a Toyota-dominated day.”
The upcoming Brickyard 400 will be raced on the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval. NASCAR returns to the oval track after a three-season hiatus.
This presents Ford an opportunity to hammer down on the idea that it can race as well on long tracks as it does on short tracks. As Gluck put it, the carmaker certainly has all the attention now.
