It took a while but Team Penske is finally coming back in the fight against Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports. At the beginning of the season, both Ryan Blaney and Joey Logano had serious concerns over the car’s performance. Now, with three race wins among them, things are finally starting to look up at the right time.
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Blaney won at Pocono and Logano finished P5, capping off a fantastic day for the Ford team. The driver of the #22 car believed that his car was good enough to run P2 and make it a 1-2 for the team. Just getting the balance right was the issue for the two-time champion. When he did get it right, it was too late to challenge for the win. Still, there were a lot of positives to take home.
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“Overall, a top five, you have to be somewhat happy with that. We had speed there toward the end of the race and I think we could have run in the top two. I don’t know if we could have been better than Ryan or not, but it just took us too long to get the balance right,” he said in a post-race interview.
Logano is looking forward to the next race at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Penske cars looked good on the straights of Pocono and Indy has even longer straights. That should complement the cars and help them fight for a second straight win.
Logano was in distress a couple of months ago with his team
Just a couple of months ago, there was a massive issue for the team. Ahead of the Darlington race earlier this season, Logano had expressed concern about the car’s performance. He was 17th on the points table at the time and said that it was not a great place to be.
“When you get in a situation like this, you start to hit the panic button a little bit. You’re trying a lot of new things. You’re just swinging the bat at anything you can think of. You’re just trying to find a direction cuz you get a little bit lost,” he said.
Since then the two-time Cup Series champion has won a points-paying race and confirmed his place in the final 16. The team will hope that Logano can find his championship-winning form again once the playoffs begin.
