Written by Gabriel Tsui, Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
It was May 2024. Three months into the 2024 NASCAR season, the Fords were certainly very frustrated with what was going on then.
After enduring unfortunate circumstances in the first few races, they have undergone one of the worst slumps in recent memory. In Talladega, they were presented with one of the most prominent chances to take the win and snap their winless drought to start the season.
However, after qualifying one-two-three and taking the first two stages, they failed to take the win after Michael McDowell spun and slowed down Brad Keselowski, opening up an opportunity for Tyler Reddick to steal the win. In Kansas, Chris Buescher conceded the win to Kyle Larson by a historical margin of 0.001 seconds.
While it is incredibly obvious that wins don’t define one’s season, given that the drivers with the highest number of wins in the past two years have failed to take the championship, the inability to win is concerning.
Twelve races into the season, seven drivers clinched a playoff berth, yet none of these seven drive a Ford Mustang. In the regular season standings, only one of the Ford drivers is within the top ten, and that is certainly not what they expected after introducing a new bodywork for 2024.
They have been facing problems with the newly introduced Mustang Dark Horse bodywork, with the problem significantly expanded on short tracks and road courses.
The brand new bodywork focused on improved aerodynamic efficiency, mostly focusing on increasing side force and improvements on side drafting, the bread and butter of intermediate track racing, where they had inconsistent results ever since gen-6 cars were introduced.
The aggressive changes fared well during their runs in different intermediate and superspeedway tracks early into the season, showing flashes of promise and improvement.
However, they suffered a horrendous three-race stretch from COTA to Martinsville, with the worst moment coming from the race in COTA, where only Chris Buescher of all Fords registered a top ten finish and nearly half of the Fords in the field below 30th place.
You and I are no race engineers, but it was quite obvious that every single Ford driver was struggling in those three weeks.
But drivers such as Chase Briscoe were optimistic, saying that the Fords have the raw speed, but needed to put the pieces together. Some like Buescher believed that even if the car hasn’t been in victory lane yet, it has flashed great performances from time to time and bad luck has held them back on multiple occasions, to which is also a major issue.
Bad luck is a major problem throughout the first half of the season.
Be it a crash caused by William Byron that took out all of the major Ford contenders such as Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, and Ryan Blaney, or a three-way drag race to the finish line in Atlanta that saw Ryan Blaney get the short end of the stick, or a historic finish between Kyle Larson and Chris Buescher that saw Buescher lose the race by the tiny margin of 0.001 seconds, it is evident that the Fords have been incredibly unfortunate.
At this point, Ford drivers are in serious distress. They have become the laughing stock of the entire NASCAR community. They have memes made about their horrible season so far, poking fun at their immense failures so far.
However, by the weird rules of the cosmos of the universe, there is a balance of misfortune and good luck. And the Fords got their turnaround right before the All-Star weekend.
In what proved to be one of the most exciting races of the season so far, Brad Keselowski took the win in Darlington after an incident between his teammate Chris Buescher and Tyler Reddick, ending a 13-race win drought for the Fords, a 110-race winless streak for himself, and most importantly, kickstarting a Ford comeback heading into the second half of the season.
After the All-Star race, the Ford comeback continued. Starting with a surprise win by Austin Cindric in Madison, after race leaders Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney had their own issues that led them to concede the lead, and ultimately the win to Cindric.
Then a dominating win in Iowa for the once heartbroken Blaney, who was one lap away from the sticker on the side of his door in Madison, now clinched a ticket to the playoffs for the eighth season in a row.
Last but not least, whether by the miracle of God, or the beautiful fuel-saving skills of Joey Logano, or both, the 22 team decided on a Hail Mary strategy to stay out for the quintuple overtime, surviving on one tank of gas for 106 laps, a gamble that paid off for Logano.
Heading into Darlington, Logano was stressing on whether he would even make the playoffs on points given the poor start to the season, but he clinched a playoff berth in the end, and the Fords are looking much stronger for the playoffs lineup.
Heading into the final six-race stretch towards the end of the regular season, there will be plenty of opportunities for other Ford drivers to get wins.
Drivers such as Michael McDowell, Josh Berry, and Chris Buescher have all been oh-so-close to getting on victory lane, and getting extra help for playoffs will be key to winning back to back to back championships for Ford.
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