Ford may have won the championship every year since the Next Gen was introduced, but the brand had dominant speed.
The team hoped that the new Dark Horse body for its Mustang might improve things. It featured a few changes, but none more noticeable than big raised fenders on the side, designed to give an aerodynamic advantage.
The car jumped out of the gate with poles at the superspeedways at Daytona and Atlanta, but that was the extent of the headlines. In ten total races, counting the Clash and Duels, the Mustang has yet to find Victory Lane.
Joey Logano has come the closest. He was leading in the final laps at Daytona before a wreck took him out, and he finished second at Richmond Raceway. Logano explained that the Dark Horse is not a particularly big change.
“Not a huge adjustment,” he summed it up. “I mean, there’ve been some things that we’ve been trying to learn about it still.”
That suggests any hiccoughs he experienced last season might remain. Last year, he only managed to win once and was eliminated in the second round of the Playoffs.
Logano explained that the hardest challenge at the short tracks is figuring out what’s new with the car and what’s a symptom of the new short track new package NASCAR introduced this year.
“You come to a short track like this, the rules package change is the bigger change than the fact that we’re racing the Dark Horse Mustang now,” Logano said.
“It’s a fair amount different, in some ways,” he described the package. “It seems like it’s a little freer into the corners for sure, seems like dirty air isn’t quite as bad, but it still will be. Dirty air is dirty air, you get up behind a car, that’s what’s going to happen. But it seems to be a little better.”
Logano’s teammate Austin Cindric agreed that the short tracks have been tough, but he pointed to Penske’s improved performance at Richmond as a sign that the team is starting to figure it out.
“I think from some sense, it’s been a little challenging on the short tracks, because we’ve had a new package, to figure out what’s the new car for this year and what’s the new package,” Cindric said.
“But I think each race we have new data points and feel more comfortable with where we feel like we’re maybe offset or better this year.”
Harrison Burton, who drives for Wood Brothers Racing, a team allied with Penske, clarified that from his perspective the car didn’t feel any different.
“It’s been interesting,” he said. “It doesn’t feel different. There’s certainly some different properties to it, some different aero numbers on it, but I don’t know that it’s been too much of an adjustment.”
While the Penske drivers haven’t felt a huge change, drivers from other teams disagreed. RFK Racing driver Chris Buescher, who had a breakout season last year with three wins in quick succession, hasn’t been able to repeat that same performance yet.
“There’s certainly differences,” Buescher said of the new car. “I feel like we’ve got some better potential as we head into some of the bigger tracks.
I think it’s hard to tell on the short tracks just because we’ve got the package change along with it, so we’re probably not getting an apples-to-apples read.
“That being said, it’s something we’re just having to work through, and with 20 minutes of practice in a single weekend it’s taken us a little longer than we’d hoped to kind of find our place there. But I feel like we’re sneaking up on it, getting close.”
For Stewart-Haas Racing, who struggled last year, the new car might actually be just what they needed. Both Chase Briscoe and new driver Noah Gragon have started the season with two top tens, better where the No. 10 and No. 14 cars were at this stage last season.
Chase Briscoe explained that the reset allows them to catch up to the other Ford teams like Penske and RFK after falling behind when the Next Gen was introduced.
“I feel like it’s been better, honestly,” Briscoe said of the Dark Horse.
“I feel like the other Ford guys might not say the same thing, but I feel like our company in general was a little more off of what Penske and stuff was, so it’s really opened up our window and our box. If we’re off, we’re not as far off. It’s easier to kind of be in the ballpark. So from my side of it, I don’t feel like it’s been anything that’s been way different, it’s just honestly made it way bigger to kind of be in the ballpark,” he explained.
The big test will come on the scoresheet. Whether Ford’s teams can adapt to the changes, however big they are, and start racking off wins will ultimately determine whether the Dark Horse, for all its striking styling, was a success.
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