In the final race of 2022 at Phoenix Raceway, Ryan Blaney played defense against Ross Chastain in order to protect Team Penske teammate Joey Logano, even though he had a car capable of winning the race himself.
Blaney was the one-car buffer between Logano and Chastain that helped preserve the former’s lead in the championship, and he could only watch in his teammate’s tire tracks as Logano took his fourth win of the season and his second NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Blaney, meanwhile, ended the season winless for the first time in his five-year tenure with Penske. Brad Keselowski’s departure at the end of 2021 was the perfect opportunity for Blaney to challenge Logano as Penske’s lead driver, and the 2022 season instead ended in bitter disappointment, serving as his elder teammate’s wingman in the final laps.
Entering the 2023 season at 29 years old, it seemed like a mystery if Blaney would live up to the expectations and become the elite Cup talent that many had pegged him to be.
But ever since that moment, Blaney has done just that and more; he and Logano have had completely opposite trajectories since.
Blaney impressed to the tune of three wins in 2023, breaking his winless drought in a dominant performance at the Coca-Cola 600. He then roared to three top-two finishes in the final three races of last season and claimed his first Cup championship and the second straight for Penske with a runner-up finish at Phoenix last November.
After close calls at both Atlanta Motor Speedway and World Wide Technology Raceway earlier this year, Blaney returned to the winner’s circle with a dominant performance at Iowa Speedway on Sunday (June 16). He led 201 of the 350 laps and held off the Hendrick Motorsports duo of William Byron and Chase Elliott despite having a tire disadvantage in the final 85 laps.
Logano, meanwhile, has only scored one win since the start of the 2023 season. That one win came at Atlanta in March a year ago, as he led the most laps and made a last-lap pass against Keselowski to score the win. But there’s been little since that race, and Logano ended last year’s playoffs with an elimination in the Round of 16 — the first defending Cup champion to be eliminated that early in the fall.
What’s concerning is that Logano only led 308 laps last year, which marked his lowest total in a season at Penske. He’s only led 524 laps since the start of 2023, and 317 have come at the drafting tracks…
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