For the first time since the October 1991 NASCAR Busch Grand National Series season finale at Martinsville Speedway, a race at NASCAR's second highest national level was contested without any Fords on the grid this past weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
It snapped a 1,116-race streak, for anybody who might have been counting.
After Haas Factory Team and RSS Racing, which share a technical alliance, switched from Ford to Chevrolet over the offseason, the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series started the season with just two Ford teams, and just one had a designated full-time driver.
That one, AM Racing, abruptly withdrew from the entry list at Rockingham Speedway in early April, and they have not been back since, leaving arguably Ford's top young prospect, Nick Sanchez, without a ride for the foreseeable future, as there is no timetable for their return.
That left Hettinger Racing, a team that entered 2026 with zero all-time O'Reilly Series starts and just three all-time starts in a NASCAR national series, as the lone remaining Ford team.
Barrett-Cope Racing, a Chevrolet team that also entered the 2026 season seeking to compete full-time after having also never before competed in a single race, ceased operations, at the very least temporarily, after just seven appearances in 2026.
Ford out of NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series
Not surprisingly, the same thing happened with Hettinger Racing after 11 events.
Following J.J. Yeley's fourth start of the season in the No. 5 Ford, which produced a season-best 11th place finish at Talladega Superspeedway, Hettinger Racing did not appear on the entry list at Texas. Like AM Racing, they remain absent from the entry list this weekend at Watkins Glen International.
Yeley is one of five drivers who drove the No. 5 car this year, although Tyler Gonzalez never actually got to compete after failing to qualify for the road course race at Circuit of the Americas. Luke Fenhaus, Chandler Smith, and Luke Baldwin each made two starts.
Ford's full-time Craftsman Truck Series lineup consists of just three teams: Front Row Motorsports, which has effectively become the flagship team in the Ford driver development pipeline by default, ThorSport Racing, which has become somewhat of a de facto home for a number of Truck Series regulars, and Team Reaume, which is a largely noncompetitive team fielding two shared entries and a full-time car for Frankie Muniz.
All in all, the fact that the O'Reilly Series is now down to just Chevrolet and Toyota does not paint a strong picture for the Blue Oval, especially considering the manufacturer is lagging behind the others not just in the driver development side, but on the Cup side.
The CW Network's live coverage of the Mission 200 at the Glen is set to begin at 4:00 p.m. ET this Saturday, May 9. Start a free trial of FuboTV now and don't miss any of the action from Watkins Glen International!
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