Last year, Ford’s Joey Logano won the NASCAR Cup championship. He didn’t deserve it. In 2023, Ford’s Ryan Blaney won the championship and he didn’t deserve it, either.
They won despite the fact that Ford, and it’s top team, Penske Racing, have struggled to be competitive in NASCAR’s Next Gen car, which came on line in 2022. And despite having had four years to work with it, Ford’s performance has been getting worse, not better.
In 2022, all three manufacturers, Chevy, Ford and Toyota, were new to the car and competition was close as they all tried to figure it out.
Using the Old Guy Sport competition index as a guide, which awards points based on winning races and competing in them rather than just finishing, the most important criteria in the NASCAR system, Logano won the championship but four other drivers were within 63 points of him.
All told, the three Penske drivers, Logano, Blaney and Austin Cindric, totaled 805 points. In 2023, Chevy’s Kyle Larson, who had been one of the four drivers right behind Logano in 2022 with 438 points, was first overall with 643 points.
Penske, meanwhile, started to tail off. Blaney, with 311 points, was Ford’s top finisher in eighth place. Logano added 202 and Cindric just one for a total of 514.
In an effort to help Ford, NASCAR allowed the manufacturer to redesign its body to improve aerodynamic downforce, and for a while, that seemed to be working, although the other manufacturers were doing more to make their cars better as well.
Penske’s three drivers showed definite improvement over 2023 although none of them were competitive with Larson, who collected 739 points, far more than anybody else and almost double Penske’s best driver, Blaney, who finished sixth with 392. Logano added 250 and Cindric 101 for a team total of 743.
That led to some optimism going into this year, but once again, the Penske Fords are struggling. Twenty-three races into the season and with the playoffs looming on the horizon, Blaney, with 239 points, is the team’s best in sixth place, far behind Denny Hamlin who has 470. Logano, with 91, and Cindric, with 37 follow.
Despite this; Hamlin’s total of 470 points is more than the three Penske drivers combined, all the Penske cars are once again eligible for the playoffs because all of them have won a race.
It’s conceivable, in fact, that because of the way NASCAR has this set up, Cindric could end up being the champion. And if people felt that Logano was an undeserving winner last year, wait until you hear the howls if Cindric pulls it off.
By themselves, wins alone should never be an automatic ticket to the playoffs. The driver’s entire body of work needs to be considered. Wins are important, but taken by themselves, they cheapen the championship.
Take Shane van Gisbergen. Like Cindric, van Gisbergen is in because he has won three races. That’s impressive on its face, the problem is van Gisbergen’s three wins have all come on road courses. Put him on an oval and he is, in a word, terrible.
He has no business being in the playoffs any more than Cindric does, yet there they are. The final irony to all this is that because only four drivers compete for the championship in the final race, and none of them might win it. the champion will be the playoff driver with the highest finish.
And that means Cindric could finish 37th in the final race and win the championship if the other three finish 38th, 39th and 40th, respectively. That’s unlikely but if there’s an early wreck…
Oh well. We’ve already had two undeserving champions in a row, might as well make it three. For sure, NASCAR doesn’t care.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Watkins Glen: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Chase Elliott, 3-Tyler Reddick. Last year’s winner at Watkins Glen: Chris Buescher. Top five at Watkins Glen last year: 1-Buescher, 2-van Gisbergen, 3-Carson Hocevar, 4-Ross Chastain, 5-Zane Smith.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport competition index picks at Iowa: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Kyle Larson, 3-Christopher Bell. Last week’s Iowa winner: William Byron. OGS competition index record after 19 races: 9-9.
OGS competition index top 10 after 19 races: 1-Hamlin 470, 2-Larson 365, 3-Chase Briscoe 316, 4-Byron 306, 5-Bell 286, 6-Ryan Blaney 239, 7-van Gisbergen 234, 8-Bubba Wallace 149, 9-Ellott 147, 10-Ty Gibbs 122.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Watkins Glen): 1-van Gisbergen 224, 2-Bell 105, 3-Elliott 80, 4-Reddick 65, 5-Gibbs 51, 6-Michael McDowell 48, 7-Briscoe 47, 8-Byron 40, 9-Kyle Busch 38, 10-Hamlin 20, Alex Bowman 20.
