Strategy Pays Big Dividends as Ford Dominates at Daytona

The Blue Oval has a 'one-for-all and all-for-one' philosophy

Sunday was a banner day for Ford Performance at Daytona International Speedway, as rookie Austin Cindric parked his No. 2 Team Penske Ford in victory lane after winning the Daytona 500 for the 17th time in the so-called Blue Oval's storied history.

The Ford camp took four of the top-five and seven of the top-10 positions, starting with Cindric and adding Chase Briscoe (3rd), Ryan Blaney (4th), Aric Almirola (5th), Michael McDowell (7th), David Ragan (8th) and Brad Keselowski (9th).

For the second straight year, a Ford was in victory lane with a driver earning their first NASCAR Cup Series victory, as McDowell earned the win in 2021 driving the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford.

And it wasn’t just the 500 miles on Sunday that featured Fords at the front of the field. While Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolets dominated single-car qualifying, sweeping the front row and four of the top-five positions, it was Ford that dominated the scene any time there were multiple cars on the high banks of Daytona.

A quick recap of the four practice sessions:

· Practice 1: McDowell was quickest as Fords turned the top 5 fastest speeds

· Practice 2: Blaney was quickest as Fords turned the top 10 fastest speeds

· Practice 3: McDowell was quickest as Fords turned the top 6 fastest speeds

· Final Practice: Harrison Burton was quickest as Fords turned the top 8 fastest speeds

When it came time for the Twin Duels on Thursday night, the storylines were dominated by Ford as well, with Keselowski winning the first duel in his first season as a co-owner in the No. 6 Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing Ford. Chris Buescher made it an all-Ford night, winning the second duel and securing the sweep for RFK Racing.

Why were the Fords so dominant in the first points-paying race with the new Next Gen car at the 2.5-mile superspeedway? According to Mark Rushbrook, Global Director of Ford Performance Motorsports, it was a result of their Ford Plus strategy.

“One of the things that we do is we really push our Ford Plus strategy,” Rushbrook said Friday morning following the Duels. “I think Toyota and Chevy are doing that, as well, but it played out in our favor. We got our cars together, and I think the crew chiefs made the right calls and ended up really well for us.”

All week long, the Fords were fast in the draft and executed to perfection when it counted on Sunday.

Blaney indicated after the race that he wasn’t going to make a move unless he was 100 percent sure either he or Cindric would win, and that mindset resulted in the third Daytona 500 victory for Team Penske, coming on team-owner Roger Penske’s 85th birthday.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t say thank you to Ryan (Blaney),” said Jeremy Bullins, crew chief of Austin Cindric’s No. 2 Ford. “That’s a hell of a teammate. I can’t thank him enough for being that good of a teammate because we probably don’t win that race without him."

For the overtime restart, Cindric elected to take the high line with Blaney lining up on the inside so he could let his rookie teammate in-line on the bottom.

“To be honest, I never even considered asking for that (Blaney allowing Cindric in on the bottom line) when we were the leader,” Bullins said. "I thought green-white-checkered, we’re just going to race for it and see what happens here. It was Ryan’s idea. Like I said, hell of a teammate. I mean, the guy is awesome.

“Then to know you’ve got somebody back there that you can trust pushing you, he kept us out front, no doubt.”

Bringing the Harley J. Earl Trophy back to the Team Penske shop sure was a fantastic way for Penske to celebrate his 85th birthday.

“I think for Ford, for us and the whole Ford group, worked really well together," Penske said. "We’ve worked hard as teams to try to develop a plan, and I think it paid off.

“I think it was not just us, it was the entire Ford camp. If you looked at it all day long, people stayed in line. I think they did the job. And then at the end, I felt that with two cars upfront and the speed we’d had all during the race, and obviously interesting we had six Fords up there and one Toyota, and Bubba (Wallace) certainly was hungry to win, too.

“So we had to execute, and that’s what we did.”

That execution was a prime example of the family atmosphere within Ford Performance and the epitome of the Ford Plus mindset, which resulted in the manufacturer leading 128 of the 201 laps on Sunday.

“We’re a family company," Rushbrook said. "We have Edsel Ford sitting right here, and that’s how we operate as a company inside our walls at Dearborn, and that’s how we go racing.

“We don’t just pick one strong team and focus on them and only them. We approach it with, we call it Ford Plus now. We have them work together sharing, and to have Roush Fenway or RFK now strong was an important part of contributing to what we have with Wood Brothers, Penske, Stewart-Haas, and even leveraging our other teams with alliances with Front Row and Rick Ware Racing and Live Fast.

"It’s a family effort. Everybody knows their role and how they fit into it and what they’re able to share and how it betters everybody.”