{"id":49858,"date":"2025-02-25T19:54:47","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T01:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=49858"},"modified":"2025-02-26T20:51:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T02:51:35","slug":"team-penskes-missed-opportunities-dominance-without-victory-in-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/25\/team-penskes-missed-opportunities-dominance-without-victory-in-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Penske\u2019s Missed Opportunities: Dominance without victory in 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

HAMPTON, Ga. \u2013 For the second consecutive week, the NASCAR Cup Series has produced three-wide racing and a thrilling finish \u2013 with Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Christopher Bell taking a dramatic last lap overtime victory on the Atlanta Motor Speedway high banks.<\/p>\n

It was a can-do answer to the season-opening DAYTONA 500 thriller a week ago when Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 William Byron became only the fifth driver in the celebrated race\u2019s 67-year history to win back-to-back trophies.<\/p>\n

Bell\u2019s answer Sunday night at Atlanta marked his first ever NASCAR Cup Series victory in a drafting-style track and the two dramatic season-opening weekends bode well for this weekend\u2019s highly-anticipated road course race, the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas (Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\"\"
Joey Logano, driver of the #22 Shell Pennzoil Ford. (Photo by James Gilbert\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the season\u2019s early common themes is a late race rush for the trophy \u2013 and missed opportunity for each race\u2019s most prolific organization, Team Penske. The three Penske drivers \u2013 reigning and three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano, 2023 series champ Ryan Blaney and 2022 DAYTONA 500 winner Austin Cindric \u2013 have combined to lead 334 of the 467 laps run to date.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an absolutely dominant 72 percent of all laps in 2025.<\/p>\n

Yet the kind of unpredictable drafting competition failed to produce a trophy for the dominant trio.<\/p>\n

“As a team, as Fords, we had the best cars here this weekend,” said Cindric, whose 47 laps out front in the No. 2 Team Penske Ford at Atlanta were second only to Logano\u2019s race best 83 laps led.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put ourselves into position to win the race and got used up and into the fence and didn\u2019t win the race. It\u2019s a shame. Two weeks in a row I feel like we have had the car to beat and haven\u2019t done it. One way or another, it is disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s putting it mildly for these three.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ryan Blaney, driver of the #12 Menards\/Great Lakes Flooring Ford enters his car during practice for the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium on February 01, 2025 in Winston Salem, North Carolina. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Despite his laps led total, Cindric finished 28th at Atlanta, nine laps down, after being collected in a late-race incident while running among the top-five. At Daytona, he led a race best 59 laps, but finished eighth.<\/p>\n

Logano leads the series with 126 laps led in the two races, including a race best 83 laps out front at Atlanta only to finish 12th. At Daytona, his No. 22 Team Penske Ford led 43 laps but crashed out and took a 35th-place finish for his effort.<\/p>\n

Blaney put his No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang on pole position at Atlanta, but led only a single lap there as Cindric \u2013 who started alongside him on the front row \u2013 took the top spot immediately. Still Blaney, who spun after contact with second-year driver Carson Hocevar, finished a team best fourth-place.<\/p>\n

The big upside for the popular former champ is that his Atlanta showing combined with his seventh place finish at Daytona \u2013 including 23 laps led \u2013 has put him into the NASCAR Cup Series championship lead by 12 points over Byron.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good comeback,” Blaney acknowledged. \u201cI just fell back from getting spun there and I was able to pick our way through and ended up scrounging a good finish out of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little bit of a struggle getting to the front after I lost some track position in the first and second stage, and then we got spun by the 77 [Hocevar] when I finally got track position and we were able to make it back up and run forward, so it was an up and down day, that\u2019s for sure. I\u2019m happy we were able to make a recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the finishes have been frustrating for a team that has dominated the opening two races, the good news is that they arrive in Austin this week, the odds-on favorites once again. The three drivers are some of the series\u2019 best on road courses and the world-renowned COTA circuit absolutely gives them another prime opportunity to reverse missed opportunity, seize on the season\u2019s mastery to date.<\/p>\n

Logano scored a road course win at Watkins Glen, N.Y. in 2015 and has a career best third-place showing at COTA in 2021, where he led 14 of the 54 laps.<\/p>\n

Cindric has five NASCAR Xfinity Series road course wins on five different tracks and is widely considered to be one of the very best road course drivers in the sport. He has a pair of top-10 finishes in four COTA starts with a best showing of sixth-place in 2023.<\/p>\n

Blaney has a win at the Charlotte ROVAL and won the pole position and finished a career best sixth-place at Austin in 2022.<\/p>\n

William Byron is the defending COTA winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service HAMPTON, Ga. \u2013 For the second consecutive week, the NASCAR Cup Series has produced three-wide racing and a thrilling finish \u2013 with Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Christopher Bell taking a dramatic last lap overtime victory on the Atlanta Motor Speedway high banks. It was a can-do answer to the season-opening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":49356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-49858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-nascar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-cYa","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/GettyImages-2197143474-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49860,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49858\/revisions\/49860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}