Team Penske comes up empty in strong Daytona 500 showing
02/18/2025 08:54 AM
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — From flag to flag, the 67th running of the Daytona 500 was Team Penske‘s race to lose. And somehow, the powerhouse organization came up short for the 10th consecutive time in the "Great American Race."
Whenever NASCAR roars into a superspeedway, Penske is the team to beat. It doesn‘t matter who competes in one of their Ford Mustangs, each of their cars competes at the front and battles for the win. Such was the case on Sunday evening.
Reigning Cup Series champion Joey Logano dominated the opening stage before experiencing mechanical gremlins early in the second stage. The No. 22 car was considerably down on horsepower, going under the hood three times throughout the night. The No. 22 team changed the ECU, but that wasn‘t the fix. The culprit was a rag stuck in the airbox in the throttle body, causing Logano to lose power. Once the rag was pulled and the throttle body was replaced, Logano was back to full song and raced to eighth in Stage 2.
Meanwhile, Team Penske‘s Austin Cindric — the outside pole sitter — and Ryan Blaney controlled the second stage. On the final lap, Blaney shoved Cindric out far enough, allowing the No. 12 to get a run and snag the stage victory.
In the final moments of the race, it appeared one of the Penske cars could end up in Victory Lane. With Cindric leading, Blaney in pursuit and Logano making another late-race rally, everything went awry for Team Penske on Lap 186. Logano made a bold move to the inside of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. that turned the No. 47 car into Blaney. The end result was a multi-car pileup, eliminating the No. 22 car from contention. Blaney continued on, but mangled.
"I felt like to win the race I had to get to the second row in my line there," Logano, who was trying to juke Stenhouse out of the way, said. "I was in third and needed to get to second. I saw the opportunity to drop down and get underneath [Stenhouse] and have [Noah Gragson], another Ford, behind me. Then, [Stenhouse] threw a late block there."
For the third Daytona 500 in a row, Blaney was an innocent bystander of a wreck, all but ending his chances of scoring the victory.
"That‘s every time I come to Daytona, for like three years," he said. "All I know is I got hit in the right rear pretty hard. Thank god, it wasn‘t in the middle of the corner."
Cindric vied for the lead against Denny Hamlin, and he was in position to win his second Daytona 500 on the final lap. Hamlin took a run down the backstretch, and contact with Cole Custer sent the No. 41 car into the No. 2 Ford. With a race back to the checkered flag, Cindric dropped to eighth, allowing Blaney to get by for seventh position, the highest finishing Ford in the field.
There was frustration across the board for the Penske bunch after the checkered flag.
"You‘re taking the white as the leader," Cindric said in disappointment. "I felt like I executed all the restarts the right way and really that whole third stage. I didn‘t get wrecked out of the lead this time, so that was cool, but it still doesn‘t make it feel any better. It was still a decent points weekend and an incredible showing by our team for the entirety of Speedweeks."
The recovery from Blaney, who had an immense amount of tape on his front end to keep his car intact, gave him the points lead. But he has yet to win the "Great American Race‘ in 11 bids.
"Our cars are pretty good, but it only means so much now," Blaney stated. "It doesn‘t matter. It all goes to shit pretty quick. It‘s nice that we‘ve had good cars and worked together well, we just cannot seem to get it to go our way.
"From Team Penske‘s standpoint, I feel like we do a good job 90% of the race and then something happens and we can‘t really control it, just try to get a little bit of luck."
Combined, the Penske trio led 125 of 201 laps (62.2%) and won two stages. But by losing control of the race on the final lap, rival juggernaut Hendrick Motorsports driver William Byron earned five Playoff points and his second consecutive Harley J. Earl Trophy.
The series heads to Atlanta Motor Speedway next weekend, where Logano has split the last four races in Victory Lane. In the 2024 Playoff opener, Cindric led a career-high 92 laps and Logano began his postseason surge.
