If you review the race-by-race results of the last two Cup Series seasons, you might be surprised to see that Team Penske won the championship both times, even though Hendrick Motorsports won the most races.
In 2022, Hendrick won 11 races as an organization. However, Penske’s Joey Logano came alive at the right time, scoring two wins in the last four races of the year to win his second Cup Series title.
Last season followed the same pattern.
Hendrick drivers won five races by the halfway point of the regular season. While other teams showed flashes of brilliance, everyone else was a step behind. Yet the playoffs brought another surprise. Ryan Blaney put together the best postseason run of his career, shaking off some early troubles to earn two wins and no finishes worse than 12th in the final six races. His efforts earned Penske a second consecutive title.
This season, once again, saw Hendrick take an early advantage. The Penske drivers, and Ford as a whole, mostly struggled. Logano was either getting caught up in crashes or battling ill-handling cars. Blaney was having more success running up front and leading laps, but wins always seemed to slip away from the No. 12 team’s grasp. Austin Cindric, the other Penske driver, was struggling just to crack the top 20 in points. It looked like Team Penske had a long road ahead if it wanted another championship in 2024.
When the summer began, momentum shifted in The Captain’s favor. The first driver to break out was Cindric, who scored a surprise victory at World Wide Technology Raceway when Blaney’s fuel tank ran dry coming to the white flag. Two weeks later, Blaney rolled to a dominant win at Iowa Speedway, punching his ticket to the postseason.
Penske then capped off June with a win by Logano at Nashville Superspeedway, who survived five overtime attempts and a bone-dry fuel tank to take the checkered flag. Logano’s victory made Penske the first organization to secure wins with all its drivers in 2024.
Suddenly, Penske was back on the map.
As the Penske drivers began to hit their stride, Hendrick was cooling off.
William Byron won three times in the first eight races of the season, but none since. Chase Elliott has remained the most consistent driver in the Cup Series, but his breakthrough win at Texas Motor Speedway in April did not open the floodgates for more victories.
Alex Bowman’s up-and-down season got a big boost with a win in the Chicago Street…
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