The Penske cars are fast, but not where they need to ge
It has not gone well for Team Penske this year. We are only 10 races into the season, and there is still time to turn it around, but it has not gone well. There have been wrecks. And blown engines. And sloppy pit stops. It just isn’t working.
“It’s obviously frustrating to be in a situation where we have really good cars that are capable of winning every week and we just haven’t been able to get it done,” Travis Geisler, Penske’s director of competition, commented earlier this year on NASCAR’s website.
Geisler’s comments were made in late March, and we are now into May, but they are as applicable now as they were then, despite the fact that Austin Cindric won at Talladega last Sunday
“I think the key is the process is working as far as what we’re bringing to the race,” Geisler commented, trying to find a bit of light in a sea of darkness.
“The hardest part of this game is finding speed, and right now, I think all the teams are doing that,” Geisler said. “We’ve just got to execute on all the other facets of the game.”
Well, ummm, actually, no.
There are two kinds of speed in NASCAR, there’s super speedway speed and then there’s real speed. Super speedway speed, of which the Penske cars seem to have plenty, is not real because you don’t generate it by yourself.
To go fast on a super speedway, you need to have a group of cars running nose-to-tail. That’s because of the draft. When two cars close in on each other, the lead car pushes the air out of the way for the trailing car, allowing it to get to the bumper of the lead car. In effect, the lead car is pulling the trailing car and the trailing car is pushing the lead car so both can go faster.
The more cars you have in line, the more this effect is magnified and it doesn’t matter whether your car is fast or slow, all the cars will go the same speed because of the draft.
If you pull out of line and run by yourself, you have to break through the air flowing over and around the car which hits the rear spoiler and slows you down. So, you can be second in a line of 20 cars, pull out, the whole line will go by you and suddenly you’re 21st.
“I keep saying there are positives,” Defending NASCAR champion Joey Logano commented. “We’ve led the most laps this year. We’ve done a lot of really good things. We are in way better shape right now than we were this time last year – like way better.
“And we’re much better on points than we were this time last year. That being said,” Logano continued, “it sucks to not convert fast cars into victories of top fives.”
That’s because the Penske cars aren’t fast away from the super speedways, where the real racing takes place.
By NASCAR’s count, Ryan Blaney, Logano, Cindric and Josh Berry have led a total of 775 laps this year. We are including Berry as part of the Penske team because the Wood brothers car he drives has a very close affiliation with Penske.
By contrast Joe Gibbs Racing, the strongest of the elite teams according to the Old Guy Sport competition index with drivers Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs, has led 515 laps, a sizable difference.
But if you subtract the three super speedways, Daytona, Talladega and Atlanta, Penske’s four cars have a total of just 420 points compared with 440 for Gibbs
This again shows how fickle super speedway racing can be. For example Cindric has only won three races in his career, and two are on super speedways including the Daytona 500.
Hamlin, meanwhile, has won three Daytona 500s including back-to-back wins in 2019 and 2020 and has led 315 laps this year but only 12 of those are on super speed ways.
On regular tracks, the Gibbs cars have four wins and 12 top fives led by Hamlin, who has two wins and five top fives in the seven races so far. The four Penske cars have one win and four top fives.
So in regular racing, Penske is being clobbered by Gibbs – and by the four Hendrick cars as well.
“You’ve just got to go back and review, was there anything we can do to avoid this (the mistakes)?” Geisler said. “What are the things in our normal process we can adjust to try and get ourselves to where we finish where we belong?
“That’s really the key right now,” Geisler remarked. “I think we’d be in really good shape if we just finished where we belong.”
The problem is, they are.
NASCAR NOTES – Three most likely winners at Texas: 1-William Byron, 2-Kyle Larson, 3-Denny Hamlin. Last year’s winner at Texas: Chase Elliott. Top five at Texas: 1-Elliott, 2-Brad Keselowski, 3-Byron, 4-Tyler Reddick, 5-Dennis Suarez.
Last week’s OGS picks: No picks, super speedway race. Last week’s winner: Austin Cindric. OGS season record:4-3.
OGS competition index top 10 after seven races: 1-Hamlin 218 points, 2-Christopher Bell 187, 3-Larson 179, 4-Byron 139, 5-Josh Berry 77, 6-Bubba Wallace 73, 7-Reddick 67, 8-Alex Bowman 52, 9-Ryan Blaney 47, 10-Elliott 45.
OGS competition index on intermediate tracks: 1-Byron 86, 2-Larson 64, 3-Hamlin 63, 4-Berry 53, 5-Bowman 48, 6-Wallace, Suarez 41, 8-Reddick, Blaney 32, 10-Bell, Ryan Preece 30.