Disappointing Ford Mustang Dark Horse Yet to Deliver in NASCAR Cup

• Brad Keselowski’s runner-up finish behind Chase Elliott in double overtime at Terxas was the fourth time Ford has finished second this season in NASCAR Cup.

• Through nine of 36 points races, Chevrolet leads among the manufacturers with six wins, while Toyota has three.

• It’s been 14 years since Ford hasn’t won within the first nine races of any season.

The good news for NASCAR’s legion of Ford fans is that a Mustang Dark Horse was second in last weekend’s Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Ironically, the bad news is that a Dark Horse Mustang was second in Texas.

Brad Keselowski’s runner-up finish behind Chase Elliott in double overtime was the fourth time Ford has been that close this year. The others: Ryan Blaney at Atlanta, Chris Buescher at Phoenix, and Joey Logano at Richmond. All told, Fords have 10 top-five finishes and 16 other top-10 finishes through Round 9 of the 36-race season.

Still, that’s 0-for-9 on the only stat line that really matters to the folks in Dearborn.

There was “cautiously boundless” optimism around FoMoCo during its huge mid-2023 rollout of its Dark Horse Mustang for NASCAR in 2024. But things haven’t gone well for the 14 full-schedule entries from Team Penske, Roush-Fenway-Keselowski, Front Row, Stewart Haas, Wood Brothers, or Rick Ware.

Former driver Kyle Petty blamed some of that on Ford Performance during the “Go PRN Live” podcast leading into the Texas race. “I think Ford thought this car was gonna be a step forward,” said the long-retired, eight-race winner on one of his many analyst appearances. “Remember, they had that other body style (Fusion for many years). You work and you get it and you understand it. Even if it’s bad, you understand where it’s at.

“Then all of a sudden you get another body style and you think it’s gonna pick up where this one left off. But it didn’t; they’ve gone backward. So now they’re having to build back again. (The Ford teams) aren’t in the same place. They’ve got a different car and had to go to a different place and start again.”

Maybe so, but it’s not like the new piece is a nag losing every weekend to Secretariat. Indeed, the Dark Horse has run well at times—just not quite well enough at just the right times. Ford had two top-five finishers at Atlanta, another at Las Vegas, three at Phoenix, and one each at Bristol, Richmond, Martinsville, and Fort Worth.