As the man once said, “There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it is in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, ‘fool me once, shame, shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.’”
I’ll admit – Team Penske had me fooled once. Way, way back in May, Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric were winless — two of them on the outside of the playoff cutline looking in — and RFK Racing appeared to have supplanted the group as Ford’s premier Cup Series team.
From where I’m sitting in November, I’ll bet that’s exactly what they wanted us to think. Maybe Logano didn’t have a ‘championship-worthy’ season in the eyes of the social-media commentariat, but the record books show that the Penske No. 22 won two titles in three years. Bring in teammate Ryan Blaney’s 2023 triumph (and this year’s runner-up result) and that suggests the NASCAR Cup Series playoff format is a solved game … and it’s Penske that solved it.
Playing tic-tac-toe? Put your “X” in the center square. Connect Four? Drop your first token down the middle. Ghost? Use a word from this list. Chasing a NASCAR Cup Series title? All you have to do is win any race before September, your strongest track in the Round of 8, and the Phoenix finale. The rest of the year, you can settle for good enough.
Sure, Logano had an average finish worse than Carson Hocevar, and would’ve ended up 12th in a season-long points format. But all that matters is it was good enough to bring Roger Penske a championship three-peat, and he’s the man who signs his paycheck.
The Nos. 2, 12 and 22 combined to win eight races in 2024, nine if you count the All-Star. With the exceptions of Pocono Raceway (Blaney) and Atlanta Motor Speedway (Logano), all came at low-banked short or intermediate circuits – the kind of tracks you’d happen to be best at if you strongly prioritized winning Phoenix and Phoenix alone.
Throughout the Gen 6 years, it seemed that regardless of track type, the Penske Fords were the class of the field at the drop of the green flag, but their rivals from Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing routinely outfoxed them with mid-race adjustments. In the Next Gen era, the Captain and his crew have taken that lesson to heart. On the scale of both races and seasons, these days the Penske cars are only fast once that pay window opens. With three years of evidence backing it up, I find it very hard to believe…
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