Ryan Blaney\u2019s victory Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was a non-too subtle wake-up call for the rest of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoff field that Team Penske is up and ready to roll on another Cup championship.<\/p>\n
The popular 2023 champ Blaney opened this three-race round of the 2025 Playoffs by leading 116 laps en route to his third victory of the season \u2013 resoundingly claiming that automatic bid into the championship\u2019s Round of 8.<\/p>\n
It marked the first time in four years a Ford had won at New Hampshire and put not only an abrupt end to the Toyota three-race domination that opened this year\u2019s Playoff run but also saw a strong statement from the Penske team as a whole.<\/p>\n
Blaney\u2019s teammate, three-time and reigning series champ Joey Logano, who finished fourth Sunday, led a race best 147 laps meaning the iconic Penske team was out front a dominating 263 of the race\u2019s 301 laps. They topped pre-race practice and then Logano and Blaney earned front row starting positions \u2013 a place they stayed for so much of the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Even Sunday\u2019s third-place finisher, Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 William Byron was impressed with Team Penske\u2019s weekend work saying the team\u2019s Ford Mustangs \u201cwere in another zip code.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s huge,\u201d Blaney said of Penske\u2019s effort. \u201cAny time you can win in the Playoffs, it\u2019s just momentum. I\u2019m a big believer in momentum and confidence. Not to say, I think all of us \u2014 you go into every weekend confident that you can do it. \u2026When you win in the Playoffs, it\u2019s just a little bit extra.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely not something to where like you don\u2019t get to relax. That\u2019s a big thing to me, like we\u2019re not going to go relax for two weeks. We\u2019re not going to go kick our feet up and just ride around. Like we\u2019ll go try to win two more races. Got to stay in that mode. Got to stay in that on kill mode. That\u2019s super important. It\u2019s nice when we can do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a confidence boost for everybody. Maybe a little weight off your shoulders to where you don\u2019t have to worry about points or anything. Still at the same time, you\u2019re trying just as hard every week to win. Whether you\u2019re way out in points got to win or you\u2019ve already one or you\u2019re looking good on points, to me it\u2019s the same goal every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
And if the rest of this round \u2013 races at Kansas Speedway this week and the Charlotte ROVAL elimination race on Oct. 5 \u2013 could be a significant indicator of whether the Penske team can extend its current three-year championship run.<\/p>\n
Logano is a three-time Kansas winner, the last victory coming in 2020.\u00a0 Blaney won the inaugural ROVAL race in 2018.<\/p>\n
Beyond Blaney\u2019s golden ticket to the Round of 8, Logano moved from below the cut-off line in the standings prior to Sunday\u2019s green flag to 24 points above (sixth among the eight drivers in positive standing). Their teammate Austin Cindric sits 10th, 19 points behind Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Chase Briscoe, who is currently holding onto eighth position.<\/p>\n
Going forward, the Round of 8 tracks set-up well for the Penske trio as well with Logano\u2019s four wins at Las Vegas most among current drivers. Cindric won at Talladega this Spring and Blaney and Logano both have three Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway trophies as well. And Blaney has won the last two October races at the season\u2019s penultimate stop at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s just part of the Playoffs, there\u2019s pressure,\u201d Blaney said of the Penske performance. \u201cThere are expectations that you should run well. Expectations with yourself. Expectations from the outside world. It\u2019s just how do you handle that and how do you just clear all that stuff out and just go race at the end of the day? That\u2019s how I\u2019ve always tried to think about it, like just go racing and go do the best job that you can.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I judge my team off of. Did we do a great job collectively? Did we communicate well through the week, through the weekend? Did we do a good job on pit road? Did I do my job on the racetrack? That\u2019s what I think we did a great job of today.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a lot of pressure. This is your season. This is your year, everyone\u2019s year that can go win a championship. It\u2019s nice that we could rise to the occasion today. Hopefully we can continue to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASCAR teams show up in Kansas this week for Sunday\u2019s Hollywood Casino 400 (3 p.m. ET on USA Network, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Trackhouse Racing\u2019s Ross Chastain is the defending winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney\u2019s victory Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was a non-too subtle wake-up call for the rest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,717,4384,73229,720,12716,634,13257,582,721,722,82],"class_list":["post-161840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-charlotte","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-kansas-speedway","tag-motor","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-october","tag-racing","tag-series","tag-speedway","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}