Even in the midst of euphoria finally winning a NASCAR Cup Series race again, Austin Cindric was left heartbroken.
It should have been a banner day for Team Penske on Sunday on the outskirts of St. Louis. Defending series champion Ryan Blaney was leading in the closing laps, Cindric was prepared to give a team that had struggled all season a 1 -2 and Joey Logano was just one position away from giving Team Penske all three of its cars in the top five. on the checkered flag.
But as the white flag waved, Blaney slowed — out of fuel, it turned out — and Cindric went straight past, leading the final lap for his second Cup Series victory and first since the season-opening Daytona 500 in more than two years. back.
“They deserved to win this race,” said Cindric, who was still happy to secure the second car in the Cup Series playoffs. “Ryan has been an excellent leader on this team. This weekend was a great weekend for everyone involved.”
Until the end.
But that’s how the season went for Team Penske, one of the perennial competitors in NASCAR’s top series. Cindric has just one top-five finish, in February at Atlanta. Blaney had three consecutive first-place finishes at the start, but had finished 36th and 39th in the previous two point races. Logano won the All-Star race in Charlottebut when he passed Blaney out of gas and finished fifth on Sunday, it was only his second top-five run in a points race all year.
That’s a much different story than last season, when Blaney won three times on his way to the title, and Logano had 11 top-five finishes in addition to a second-place finish in the Daytona 500 and a win at Atlanta.
Team Penske’s meager results were mirrored by the Ford teams as a whole. The manufacturer, which switched from the sixth-generation Mustang to the Mustang Dark Horse body style this season, didn’t reach victory lane until Brad Keselowski last month at Darlington, and that remained its only victory until Cindric on Sunday.
“I’m proud of Team Penske and Ford. I’m very happy with our performance today,” said Blaney, who may have consumed more fuel than he thought while battling for several laps with Christopher Bell, who passed out late when his engine began having problems.
“I don’t know what I need to do to get some luck on our side,” Blaney added. “I blew the last two points races and I thought we had a great chance of winning and I ended up badly, so I appreciate the effort. We just have to stick with it.”
It’s also been a confusing year for Team Penske beyond NASCAR.
The biggest scandal to hit IndyCar in years occurred after the season-opening race in St. Petersburg, Florida, when it was discovered that Team Penske’s three cars had an illegal version of the push-to-pass software installed, giving them a increased power they could use when rivals couldn’t. Newgarden had his victory overturned and his teammate Scott McLaughlin was also disqualified, and owner of the team – and the series – Roger Penske suspended four key employees of the organization.
Among them was Cindric’s father, Tim Cindric, president of Team Penske and Newgarden’s race strategist.
“Newgarden should never have worried about this because our team didn’t realize it, but it wasn’t malicious,” Penske told the Associated Press in an interview last week in Detroit. “By the way, it was available for everyone to see at every race. So, at the end of the day, we took our medicine and moved on.”
This was evident at the Indy 500. Team Penske took the front row in qualifying, Newgarden won his second consecutive 500 with a daring pass of Pato O’Ward on the final lap, and pole sitter McLaughlin finished sixth after leading at the start.
While IndyCar teams I had problems last weekend in Detroit, where Will Power led with a sixth-place finish, the Cup Series teams finally came into their own. Cindric may have felt like he was gifted with victory, but the No. 2 car led the second most laps at 53, while Blaney spent 20 laps running up front and Logano also led one lap.
Perhaps it was a sign that things were finally changing for the organization.
“We were able to get some points, which we need to do, and a Penske car got into victory lane,” Logano said, “so you have to be happy about that. Obviously, we’d prefer it to be us, but that impulse runs through the entire store. It’s still a good day.
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