The Team Penske Way
Yesterday at 02:22 PM
AVONDALE, Ariz. — One of the tall tasks that Team Penske drivers face in their tenure with the organization is delivering an achievement to Roger Penske that he doesn‘t already have. Yet defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano both have that on their radar this weekend in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway.
Team Penske is undefeated in claiming championships in the Next Gen era. Joey Logano strung a four-win season together in 2022 to win his second Cup title. In 2023, Blaney jumped on to the scene by winning his first championship. The Nos. 12 and 22 teams will be looking to bring Penske its third straight championship for the first time in team history. Ford has never won three straight Cup trophies, either.
"It would mean the world to keep bringing [Penske] things," Blaney stated. "You can‘t buy him anything, so you‘ve got to win him championships and races. That‘s all he really cares about."
The two Penske teammates have won three races apiece through the opening 35 races. It wasn‘t until the first weekend of June — the 15th race of the season — at World Wide technology Raceway at Gateway that Penske visited Victory Lane in 2024, when Austin Cindric passed Blaney for the lead coming to the white flag when the No. 12 car ran out of fuel.
Blaney scored his first triumph in dominant fashion at Iowa Speedway, leading a career-high 201 laps. If it wasn‘t for Logano stretching his fuel tank to the absolute brink at Nashville Superspeedway at the end of June, he wouldn‘t have missed the Playoffs entirely. Instead, after finishing 15th in the regular season championship standings, he won two pivotal races in the postseason to advance to Phoenix.
"We’ve done this before — it kind of seems like our way of doing it," Logano said of getting hot later in the season. "We want to win earlier than that, but it seems like for whatever the reasons are, we’re able to really recover seasons. That’s something I’m really proud of because there’s a lot of teams that would look at it and say, "We’re going to call it a rebuilding year.‘ And when sports teams, we call it rebuilding years that‘s an excuse for sucking — we don’t do that. We’re going to go to work and try to figure out how to be better and salvage a year."
Logano was the first driver to advance to the Championship 4 by stretching his fuel tank yet again at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Blaney finished runner-up to Tyler Reddick at Homestead-Miami Speedway in heartbreaking fashion. When the series moved on to Martinsville Speedway, the No. 12 team came up clutch for the second season in a row, winning his way to Phoenix.
Paul Wolfe and the No. 22 team was able to get a head start on preparing for Phoenix. In turn, that helps out the No. 12 team as Wolfe and Jonathan Hassler share information behind the scenes.
This season marks the second time that Penske has advanced multiple entries into the Championship 4, joining the 2020 season when Logano and Brad Keselowski had a shot at Phoenix.
"I think the advantage of it is we have a better percentage chance of bringing Team Penske a championship," Blaney said. "That‘s great; you have a 50% shot — if we‘re being blunt — to bring Team Penske a championship. That‘s amazing and fires everyone up that works for Team Penske that doesn‘t have an allegiance to work on just the 12 or 22. We‘re selfish and we want to be that team to bring it, but for everybody that has their hands in Team Penske as a whole, that is great and it fires them up that we have two chances."
Logano doesn‘t see there being any disadvantages by getting multiple cars into the championship race.
"It’s worth the trade out for the ability to bring Roger a championship," he said. "Multiplying our chances by two seems to help."
Blaney stated that none of the teams at Team Penske hide anything from each other and are in constant communication. The only challenge could come if both the Nos. 12 and 22 cars are in contention to win the championship, running at the front of the field.
"The difficult part is if Joey and I are running 1-2 at the end of the race and we‘re racing hard — but that‘s great if we‘re running 1-2," Blaney added. "Roger has always been the way of there‘s no team orders, there‘s no number one car, number two car, number three car, it‘s just: race each other as hard as you can, I don‘t care who finishes first or second as long as you finish first and second — meaning do not wreck each other. If we‘re running 1-2, that‘s awesome and just let us race it out."
Blaney has eight straight top-10 finishes at Phoenix. Logano is a three-time winner, including two of the last nine races.
