LONG POND, Pa. — The 2026 season has presented Ford its fair share of challenges.
Through the season’s first 15 races, the manufacturer has just one win, which came with Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 Team Penske group on March 8 at Phoenix Raceway. Sitting third in the NASCAR Cup Series standings, Blaney is one of just two Fords inside the top 10 in points ahead of Sunday’s race at Pocono Raceway (1 p.m. ET, Prime Video, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
MORE: Pocono schedule | Cup standings
The last month and a half has been underwhelming for the Blue Ovals. In five races since the beginning of May, Ford has just one top five: a fifth-place finish for Chris Buescher on May 3 at Texas Motor Speedway. The manufacturer was shut out of at least the top six positions at Watkins Glen International, Charlotte Motor Speedway, Nashville Superspeedway and Michigan International Speedway.
As his point total depicts, Blaney has been the best of the Mustangs this year. But the most recent of his three top fives came in a runner-up finish to Ty Gibbs at Bristol Motor Speedway in the middle of April.
Optimism isn’t lost within the Ford camp — not by a long shot. However, there is a realistic acceptance that there is a gap between their current capabilities and the performance and execution of the Toyota and Chevrolet teams.
“You’re always trying to get better,” Blaney said Saturday at Pocono. “There’s always things we’re looking at doing to try to be a little better here and there. I mean, obviously you can’t do any body stuff, but can always set up things you’re trying to change. Like, did this work a little bit better here? Can we continue to refine that or work on that path? Sometimes you go down the wrong path, you know? And you learn from those. Not saying I don’t think we’ve gone down any wrong path; it’s just we’re continuing to try to figure things to do the best we can.
“There are things we can do, just try to refine some stuff. A little bit goes a long way in this series, so hopefully we can just start piecing together little things, and they start to add up.”
Team Penske has earned the best finishes for the Ford bunch over the past month, with Blaney, Joey Logano and Austin Cindric each taking turns as the manufacturer’s best finisher over the past four races. But best of the bunch isn’t all they’d like to be. And without a new body until the 2027 introduction of the Dark Horse Mustang SC, how can teams realistically erase any deficiencies?
“My message to my guys in general is we have to keep giving our 100%, trying to find every little bit we can,” No. 22 crew chief Paul Wolfe told NASCAR.com. “Because as long as I’ve been doing this now, eventually it’ll turn around and you’ll have at least equal or maybe we’ll have the advantage from a car-potential standpoint. And at that moment, you need to make sure you’ve got all your i’s dotted, t’s crossed, so that we can get back to Victory Lane and win those races like we know we’ve done in the past and that we’re capable of as a team.”
At RFK Racing, Buescher has been the lead dog of the three-car program statistically, joining Blaney as the only other Ford inside the top 10 in points, entering Sunday’s race eighth in the standings. As Buescher acknowledged in his Saturday press conference, “Our RFK circle had a pretty brutal month.” In five races for Buescher, Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece since May began, the trio has combined for only two top 10s but collected five DNFs across 20 combined starts.
“We’ve never had to work so hard to run ninth at Michigan,” Buescher said. “That was largely due to several instances throughout the race that resulted in having to tape up the nose, so again, not the best read on the day and where we stacked up. I certainly look back at practice and even qualifying and the race at times, I feel like we had the ability to run top five, fifth to seventh. That was kind of what we were capable of there, and I guess (that’s) good and bad. That’s kind of where we’ve found ourselves at a lot of the mile-and-a-halfs.
“We’re close, but we have to keep pushing. We have some work to do, and we’re aware of that, but we’re certainly in the ballpark, and we feel like we’ve got good-handling race cars at RFK, and we’re working steadily to figure out how to get these Mustangs into Victory Lane. We’re just not quite there at that last step yet.”
Despite the lack of statistical success this season, Buescher said he has been eager to return to Pocono “for a lot of weeks,” particularly after a fourth-place run at the “Tricky Triangle” just one year ago. He anticipates last year’s notes will still apply — and practice proved he may be right as his No. 17 Ford was fastest in overall and five-lap averages.
“It’s going to translate, last year’s stuff,” Buescher said. “We’re not sitting still. We didn’t just copy-paste, but it is very largely based around what we had here last year and what was so fast for us. We very narrowly missed the pole here last year. We had a very fast lap in the race and ran up front all day. Just again, it’s the detail work that you’ve got to get right. These races are so hard to win, and they’re supposed to be, but, man, to really get those good days and turn them into great days, it’s down to the detail work. And we’re going to keep working on that.”
Buescher will start The Great American Getaway 400 from sixth position as Ford’s best qualifier, with Team Penske housemates Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano 10th and 11th, respectively.