TALLADEGA, Ala. — Team Penske’s championship hopes could end next weekend at Martinsville. If they do, the final laps of Sunday’s race at Talladega will be why.
Team Penske, which has won the past three Cup titles with Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney, faces a must-win situation at Martinsville to have either driver contend for a title Nov. 2 at Phoenix.
“It sucks (that) you know one of your guys isn’t going to transfer for sure,” Travis Geisler, competition director for Team Penske, said Sunday night. “We’ve got to figure out how to get one of them through.”
Chase Briscoe’s Talladega victory made him the second Joe Gibbs Racing driver to secure a spot in the Championship 4, joining Denny Hamlin. Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson hold the final two transfer spots.
Logano, the reigning series champion, is 38 points below the cutline and Blaney is 47 entering next weekend’s elimination race at Martinsville on NBC and Peacock.
Logano: Talladega ‘a battle throughout the day’
Joey Logano reflects on the “battle” at Talladega that leaves him frustrated after being unable to capitalize on what was a solid day all things considered.
“Personally I would love to not see a Penske car get in there,” Briscoe said of the title race, noting Penske’s dominance there.
Briscoe then added: “It doesn’t matter if it’s a Penske car, another Hendrick car. Whoever it is, they’re going to be super hard to beat. All three organizations that are left are the three elite teams. You’re going to be fighting hard for it no matter who it is.”
Logano and Blaney are so far back in the points after Logano finished 16th and Blaney was 23rd at Talladega.
They were in control of Sunday’s race until a restart 17 laps from the scheduled distance.
Blaney led the inside lane with Logano, Brad Keselowski and Ryan Preece behind.
Shortly after the restart the inside line wasn’t as dominant and cars on the outside line began to move ahead. Blaney dropped to fourth and Logano sixth on Lap 176 on 193. By Lap 180, Blaney was seventh and Logano ninth. By Lap 183, Blaney had dropped to 17th and Logano was 25th.
Joe Gibbs Racing has clinched half of the Championship 4 field.
“The car behind me was saving gas,” Logano said of Keselowski in explaining why the bottom line lost ground to cars on the outside lane. “That doesn’t help. That kills the whole bottom lane. Cars are pulling down in front of us. We just keep getting demoted from the first two cars to third in line, fourth in line and then next thing you know we’re all in the back.”
Keselowski said after the race: “We came down to that next-to-last restart and it just didn’t come together.”
Jeremy Bullins, crew chief for Keselowski, told NBC Sports that Keselowski was not saving gas in those final laps.
Whatever the cause, the result was that Blaney, Logano and those on the inside line fell back in the pack.
Blaney ‘just faded’ near end at Talladega
Ryan Blaney was proud of the position he and his team put themselves in, but the car “just faded” in the closing laps of the race that puts him in a must-win situation heading to Martinsville.
So now the focus turns to Martinsville and what’s at stake for Blaney and Logano.
Blaney has won the Martinsville playoff race the past two years to reach the title race but admits a three-peat won’t be easy.
“So what, we’ve won there twice,” Blaney said on pit road shortly after climbing from his car. “You never know what’s going to happen year after year. People have been saying, ‘Oh, Blaney is going to win Martinsville easy. It’s (expletive). It’s hard. I don’t know what speed we’re going to have.
“It’s nice that we’ve won there a couple of times, but we’ve got to dig down deep for this one.”
