HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Team Penske is battling its own Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome.
Through Sunday’s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the sixth race of the 2025 campaign, nobody has led more laps than its trio of drivers — Joey Logano (247 laps led), Austin Cindric (159) and Ryan Blaney (148). All three rank inside the top five in stage points this season and sit within the top 10 of the series’ best average running positions, according to NASCAR’s loop data.
And yet none of the three have the consistent results to back up their apparent dominance in the races’ early and middle portions. Cindric’s 17.5 average finish is best of the bunch ahead of Logano’s 18.8 and Blaney’s 21.5; Logano is still searching for his first top 10 just six races removed from his 2024 Cup Series championship; and Blaney has failed to finish each of the last three races — two due to engine failure, which bit him again at Homestead after leading a race-high 124 laps and winning Stage 1.
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As a result, Ryan Blaney is Team Penske’s highest-ranking driver in points at 10th, Logano 11th and Cindric 21st after a 50-point post-race penalty stemming from the March 2 event at Circuit of The Americas.
Travis Geisler, Team Penske’s vice president of competition, weighs the good with the bad. But his disappointment was evident in the NASCAR Cup Series garage following Sunday’s race. Logano was the team’s best finisher in 14th place, ahead of Cindric in 19th; Blaney’s blown engine relegated him to a 36th-place finish. Josh Berry’s No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford is built, assembled and supported by Team Penske, but one week after earning his first Cup win at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a second-place qualifying effort at Homestead went for naught when he, Logano and Kyle Larson collided on pit road after the conclusion of Stage 1. Berry mustered a 17th-place finish.
“It’s obviously frustrating to be in a situation where we’ve had really good cars that are capable of winning every week and just haven’t really been able to execute and get it done,” Geisler told NASCAR.com. “But I think the key is the process is working as far as what we’re bringing to the race track. That’s the hardest part of this game, is finding speed. And right now, I think all the teams are doing that. We’ve just got to execute on all the other facets of the game.”
Logano’s day was equally unraveled by the early pit-road contact. While Logano’s lack of track position after the incident was a hinderance, the crew’s initial tape application to repair Logano’s right-front fender damage did them no favors, crew chief Paul Wolfe explained.
“When we had the damage, we covered over the hood flap,” Wolfe told NASCAR.com. “So that was why, when we were trying to recover from the issue on that green-flag stop, we had to cut it open. So that’s how we lost the lap and all that. Just kept snowballing for a minute. Fortunately, the car was good on the long haul, and we were able to get back into the (free pass) spot as the leaders were putting guys a lap down. We were coming along there pretty good, and then from there, just had a decent car that we could salvage something out of it. Just a rough day.”
Wolfe has guided the No. 22 team to championships in two of the last three seasons, the lone exception coming in 2023 when Blaney soared to his first title. The finishes aren’t landing for Logano and Co. yet, but Wolfe isn’t ready to hit the panic button.
“I think if you look back at this time last year, we didn’t have the speed or the results. So I guess the bright side of it is we have speed,” Wolfe said. “I think how we ended the season last year, we’ve been able to come out of the gates this year and still carry that speed that we were able to show at the end of last season, so I think that’s a positive. And now it’s just continuing to refine it.
“Speaking for the 22 group specifically, there’s a lot of experience here, and we’ve shown how we’re able to execute and do the things we need to do. So it’s unfortunate, but not really any reason to be concerned. Optimistic about being able to have the speed and (it’s a) much better spot than what we were starting season last year.”
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From the 30,000-foot perspective, however, Geisler is keen to smooth out the early-season bumps sooner than later.
“Stuff on pit road, you’ve just got to go back and review,” he said. “Was there anything we can do to avoid it? What are the things as our normal process can we adjust and try to get ourselves where we finish where we belong? That’s really the key right now. I think we’d be in really good shape if we just finished where we belong.”
Blaney had never failed to finish three consecutive Cup races until Homestead marked the unfortunate milestone. Before the March 9 race at Phoenix Raceway, Blaney’s last engine-related DNF was at Texas Motor Speedway in 2019 when he was sidelined for an overheating motor. Six years later, in two of the last three races, his engine has gone up in smoke. This time, his engine gave up on the frontstretch, leaving a cloud of smoke over the onlooking fans at Homestead-Miami.
Geisler said the team will pore over data to ensure nothing on its or Blaney’s end — like shifting, over-revving or overheating — contributed to the recent issues, and he indicated no signs of those have shown yet.
“From there, you’ve just got to lean on Roush Yates (Engines) and Ford to fix the problem,” Geisler said. “We have a lot of problems that we need to fix from this weekend, and we’ve got to outsource that one and let somebody else handle it and have the trust that, over the years, they’ve given us incredibly reliable engines and really have delivered for us. And they’ve just got to go the drawing board a little bit here and figure out what’s going on. I think it looks like a couple different modes of failure here, I would say. So maybe there’s not necessarily a clear direction, but that’s up to them.”
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In the meantime, finishing at the front is a top priority for Team Penske moving forward. Up next is Martinsville Speedway on Sunday (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where Blaney has won each of the last two fall races.
Powered by the early-season frustration, perhaps there will be added emphasis here that will help the team’s results better reflect its performance.
“We’ve got to look internally at what we didn’t do well (Sunday),” Geisler said. “We had three other cars, if you include the 21, that should have been able to run top 10, and we didn’t get there with any of them. So that’s our job. That’s what we’ll go focus on (Monday). Martinsville is another solid place for us, so hopefully, we can go there and get things turned around.”
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