Joey Logano has been on a tear lately, Ford’s version of Denny Hamlin, if you will. Heading into this weekend’s race at New Hampshire, Logano has won two of the last four races, both on short tracks, and finished third in another, this at Indianapolis.
In fact, all the Penske Fords have come to life over the last five races. Ryan Blaney, Austin Cindric and Josh Berry, who drives the Wood Brothers Ford prepared by Penske, have all added top five finishes, the best showing by Penske this year.
All told and not counting superspeedways, Penske has only 11 top fives this season, so getting six in a five-race stretch is pretty impressive, What that means, though, in terms of the rapidly approaching playoffs, is anybody’s guess because Toyota is still the elephant in the room.
Even Logano, famous – or infamous – for his late season surges which have led to championships in 2022 and 2024, admits Toyota, and particularly the Joe Gibbs Racing fearsome foursome of Hamlin, Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe and Ty Gibbs, have an advantage.
After edging Briscoe at Richmond last Saturday, Logano was bluntly honest. “He (Briscoe) was faster,” Logano said after the race according to essentiallysports.com.
In fact Briscoe thought his competition would come from Bell, not Briscoe. “I was like ‘Okay, I’m gonna be okay, I just got to pass the 20 (Bell)’, he said. “Then he (Briscoe) kind of took off there.”
“It’s just typical late summer Joey Logano, just coming up out of nowhere on you,” runner-up Briscoe said according to NASCAR’s website. “So yeah, just go on to the next one and see what we can do.”
Still, as shown by the Old Guy Sport competition index, Penske, and especially Logano, have started to flex their muscles in the last five races.
Over that span, Logano has scored 166 points, more than anybody, with Blaney adding 56, Cindric 33 and Berry 20 for a team total of 275.
For JGR, Bell has 138, Hamlin 117, Briscoe 110 and Gibbs 90. That makes their team total an impressive 455. Trailing, and trailing badly, are the four Hendrick Chevys. William Byron, with just 35 points, is the leader. Alex Bowman has 10, Kyle Larson four and Chase Elliott one, giving Hendrick a team total of just 50.
Hendrick has spent the entire season trying to figure out the brand new Chevy and it hasn’t been able to do it. And if it hasn’t got it figured out by now, it’s hard to see how anything will change the rest of the way.
Larson, the defending Cup champion, has all but given up. “None of us might seem confident as far as winning a championship, but there is still that confidence that, because you’re racing for Hendrick Motorsports, you know at any point we can turn it around,” Larson told journalist Tim Moore as reported by essentiallysports.com.
Still, Logano seems to be the only outsider who has any chance of disrupting what looks to be an unstoppable Toyota run to the title. “It’s nice to see we’ve made quite a recovery, and, like I said, change our goals at this point in the season,” Logano commented according to NASCAR’s website.
“We’ve got a legit shot at winning the championship now,” Logano continued. “We’re getting hot at the right time. It will be a fun chase till the end. I’m proud of everyone sticking together. These are the times it’s hard to do that, the times you see teams break. It wouldn’t take much longer running the way we were running until something was going to break (on our team),” he added.
“Is anybody surprised?” teammate Blaney, who won a championship himself in 2023 to give Penske three of the last four, asked. “I’ve had to see it all year,” He continued according to NASCAR’s website.
“It’s like ‘Oh, the 22 team (Logano) isn’t running where they should.’ “I’m just like, in my mind, ‘just wait, they’re going to be someone you have to race with for sure,'” Blaney commented. “It’s no surprise to me they’ve gotten back to form in the last month or so.”
Still, it’s hard to see Logano getting there. He, and the Penske team in general, have had their best runs on short tracks, and there are only three short tracks on the 10-race chase schedule. Six are on intermediate tracks and one is on a superspeedway.
And Penske hasn’t figured out how to make its cars competitive on intermediate ovals. According to the Old Guy Sport competition index, in the 10 intermediate races so far, Penske has just 82 points including 31 for Logano. That compares with 799 for JGR which includes 419 for Hamlin.
And if you want to throw in Hendrick, which is running much better on the intermediate ovals than Penske, Hamlin’s 419 still tops Hendrick’s entire team total of 399.
So for Logano – and anybody else looking to topple Toyota and Hamlin – winning a championship seems to be the impossible dream, even though NASCAR’s point system, which is designed to keep as many cars competitive for as long as possible, will do everything it can to bring him back to the pack.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at New Hampshire: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-Ryan Blaney, 3-Denny Hamlin. Last year’s winner at New Hampshire: Blaney. Top five at New Hampshire last year: 1-Blaney, 2-Josh Berry, 3-William Byron, 4-Joey Logano, 5-Chase Elliott.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Richmond picks: 1-Bell, 2-Hamlin, 3-Blaney. Richmond winner: Logano. OGS season record: 10-10.(superspeedways are not included in OGS picks).
OGS competition index top 10 after Richmond: 1-Hamlin 565, 2-Bell 371, 3-Tyler Reddick 344, 4-Chase Briscoe 312, 5-Ty Gibbs 295, 6-Kyle Larson 270, 7-Shane van Gisbergen 223, 8-Blaney 213, 9-Logano 208, 10-Elliott 182.
OGS competition index top 10 on short tracks (tracks most like New Hampshire): 1-Logano 177, 2-Gibbs 169, 3-Blaney 168, 4-Hamlin 146, 5-Bell 119, 6-Briscoe 101, 7-Larson 83, 8-Elliott 72, 9-Austin Cindric 30, 10-Reddick 21.
