Team Penske leaves Talladega dejected as all three cars wreck out
Yesterday at 07:24 PM
Whenever the NASCAR Cup Series visits a superspeedway, Team Penske jumps off the page. It can‘t be overstated how well the three-car Goliath works together at superspeedway, as it always contends for the win.
Once again, that was on full display in the middle race in the Round of 12 at Talladega Superspeedway. Amid 66 lead changes, Team Penske faced the field 19 different times throughout the YellaWood 500. Austin Cindric led a race-high 29 laps and won Stage 2, his fourth stage victory of the season on a superspeedway.
All looked well for Penske until the final lap of Stage 2. With Cindric leading the field, defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney got pushed from behind in the tri-oval by Alex Bowman, turning the No. 12 Ford into Ross Chastain. Fellow Playoff drivers Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, the third Team Penske driver, piled in and received damage.
Blaney rode around for four laps under caution, just hoping to turn as many circuits as possible. Then, the No. 12 car turned into a blaze of glory, ending the race in 39th.
"I don‘t know if [Bowman] ever lifted and just drilled me from like three car lengths back," Blaney told reporters. "The worst possible spot you could do it, so it‘s pretty dumb on his part and it figures that he gets away scot free per usual.
"He just wrecked the [expletive] out of me. I don‘t know what he‘s thinking."
Not knowing how far the No. 12 team would drop on the playoff grid, a furious Blaney had to watch the other 11 Playoff drivers dish it out in a chaotic final stage. And what turned out to be a misfortune for his two teammates gave Blaney a buffer leading into the final race in the Round of 12 next weekend at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
With five laps remaining in the scheduled distance of the race, Logano, who was the third car on the bottom lane, shoved former Penske teammate Brad Keselowski into Cindric and turned the No. 2 car sideways. That slight contact triggered a 28-car pile up, the most vehicles ever involved in a single Cup Series wreck.
Neither Cindric or Logano could drive around and were credited with 32nd- and 33rd-place finishes.
"Hard to say. Incredibly frustrated," Cindric told NBC Sports when asked what happened. "We had a great shot to win the race and I‘m really proud of my team and the full execution of the day..
"I don‘t feel like complaining right now: I‘m too pissed off and it won‘t do anything. Just proud of the team. We‘ve brought some really fast racecars every single race in the Playoffs, and we‘re going to have to go bring another one next week and do my job."
While Logano is touted for his aggressiveness on superspeedways, it‘s his fourth result this season of 28th or worse in the six drafting-style events. His lone top 10 was a victory to kickoff the Playoffs at Atlanta.
"I don‘t think I could have done much different," Logano said. "We had the bottom working fairly well and my timing got a little bit off, off of [Cindric] from what we had been doing. Got pushed from [Harrison Burton] that transferred to [Keselowski] that transferred to [Cindric]. Bad angle."
With Ricky Stenhouse Jr. scoring his fourth career victory on superspeedways, only William Byron has scored enough points in the opening two races in the Round of 12 to lock into the Round of 8. And what once looked like it was going to be a bleak points day for Blaney ended up being 25 points above the elimination line. Logano (-13) and Cindric (-29) weren‘t as fortunate.
