Ford unloads the cars to beat every time the NASCAR Cup Series heads to the superspeedway tracks of Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway, and its dominance is never in doubt.
The Next Gen Fords and their drivers consistently qualify at the front of the field, and they frequently control the race from start to finish. It should come as no surprise that Ford has led nearly two-thirds of the laps in the 14 superspeedway races since 2023, with 1,933 led out of a possible 2,944.
A Ford driver has led the most laps in every superspeedway race since 2023, and the Blue Ovals have combined to lead more than half the laps in all but one superspeedway race in the last two years.
It might come as a surprise then, that all those poles and laps out front haven’t translated over to the win column. In fact, Ford isn’t even the winningest manufacturer in this time frame. That would be Chevrolet with seven wins, and despite leading more than 65% of the laps at these tracks since 2023, a Ford has only gone on to win five of the 14, with zero Daytona 500 victories to boot.
Ford led 143 of the 201 laps in this year’s Daytona 500, and with Ford drivers Austin Cindric and Cole Custer in winning contention on the final lap, Custer triggered a Big One on the backstretch that rolled out the red carpet for William Byron to clinch his second-consecutive 500 victory.
To add insult to injury, Ford claimed nine of the top 10 spots in qualifying for Sunday’s (Feb. 23) Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta and led 195 of the race’s 266 laps. However, despite all that, just one Ford (Ryan Blaney in fourth) scored a top-10 finish.
All that speed, all those laps led, only for Chevrolet and now Toyota to frequently snooker the Fords at the finish after trailing all day.
In a style of racing that’s decided by crashes and fractions of a second, it’s important to note how close Ford had come to winning in the aforementioned losses.
The 2023 Daytona 500 ended under caution after a last-lap wreck in turn 1, and Joey Logano was just a fender away from winning his second 500 when the field was frozen with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. out front.
At Talladega in April 2023, Blaney had a full head of steam on Bubba Wallace heading into turn 1 on the final lap. Wallace made a late block on the No. 12 and spun, and Kyle Busch squeaked by the dominant Blaney in the aftermath to win the race under yellow.
Ford was the class of the field again at Atlanta in July 2023, but an impending rainstorm that ultimately shortened the race flipped the strategy upside down and allowed the Chevrolets to capitalize in a race where they were largely outmatched.
Flash forward to 2024, where Blaney and Brad Keselowski lost by a combined nine one-thousandths of a second in photo finishes at Atlanta in February and Talladega in October, respectively. Talladega that April wasn’t much better, as Michael McDowell made a late block on Keselowski in the trioval that triggered a huge crash and allowed Tyler Reddick to zip by and score Toyota’s first win on a superspeedway since the Gen 6 era.
All those near-miss finishes and a plethora of late-race wrecks triggered at the front of the field have crippled Ford’s strength in numbers in the late-race restarts where it matters the most. Five superspeedway wins since 2023 is still nothing to sneeze at, but with Ford’s absurd dominance, it has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in these races more often than not.
With the nature of superspeedway racing in the present day, it’s an unlucky break for Ford that some of its most dominant tracks are ones where overtime, crashes and random chance play far more of a role than they do in the remaining 30 weekends on the schedule.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.
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