No driver has been in the bad books of Lady Luck as Ryan Blaney has this season. He has arguably been the fastest driver on the track and yet suffered three DNFs in the first six races of the season. It is a matter of concern that two of those DNFs were because of engine failures. His teammate Joey Logano spoke about the mood in the Team Penske camp in light of this.
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He said in Martinsville that they need to dissect what happened with Blaney’s #12 Ford Mustang and understand the problem. It could have been a range of issues, such as overheating or over-revving. He added, “I’m not here to publicize what happened. But that’s just kind of how you do it. Once you understand it, you can fix it.”
The first DNF came in the Phoenix Raceway. Blaney reported some troubles with his car early in the race and yet kept going on. On Lap 290, the Mustang finally gave up. He scored 26th place after getting back to his garage. The following week, he crashed out in Las Vegas and failed to finish a race for the second consecutive time.
Issues trailed him into Homestead-Miami. He led 124 laps with blistering pace before his Mustang Dark Horse’s engine failed with 60 laps left to race. He said after the event that he did not have any sort of warning that it would fail him. Nevertheless, he praised his crew for giving him a fast car and noted that they would keep on moving.
Austin Cindric’s take on Blaney’s engine troubles
26-year-old Cindric is the third and final driver on Team Penske’s roster. He kicked off the year in strong fashion with incredible speed, but hit a big bump at the Circuit of the Americas. He was docked 50 points for a rule infringement and is currently fighting to overcome the deficit. He gave a slightly better view of what’s going on behind the scenes than Logano.
He said, “There’s certainly been a lot of conversation behind the scenes, you know, as far as understanding what that is, and you know how it affects the rest of our cars and or if it does.” The demands that the Martinsville Speedway puts on the engines are different from those of other tracks.
Cindric pointed this out and detailed that they’ve been providing inputs as a team to overcome it. Hopes are that all three of the Team Penske drivers will have enough juice in their cars to last through the event on Sunday. Another DNF is the last thing Roger Penske would want to see on the results board.
