After Bristol Upset Joey Logano Sides With Former Teammate to Take a Jab at Team Penske

At the start of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season, Joey Logano was considered to be one of the drivers to look out for. By the time the round of 12 came to pass, the defending champion found himself out of contention to defend his crown. Of course, Logano is partly to blame for the disaster season he has had, but his team does not take any less blame. Team Penske’s car this year is not close to what it was in 2022 and the reigning Cup Series champion did not shy away from taking a sly dig at his team as he commended his former teammate for getting things right.

From being perhaps the strongest Ford team on the grid, Team Penske has fallen to having only one driver in the round of 12 (Ryan Blaney) who is also on the verge of being eliminated. They had started the season well with Logano, who won his only race of the season early on. Since then, the defending Cup Series champion has been performing like anything but a champion, with lackluster performances week in and week out. The focus will shift to next year’s campaign for Logano and the team who will be hungry to make a strong comeback.

“All hands on deck” for Team Penske as a resurgent Ford team overshadows them

Despite being a man who usually has a smile on his face, Joey Logano’s frustrations with his season have often seeped out through his in-race radios and interviews. In a recent interview on SiriusXM, the driver of the #22 took a shot at his team’s misfortunes as he compared them with the resurgent Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing.

RFK Racing did not have the ‘K’ in their name until the 2022 season. That is because Brad Keselowski, who used to be a Team Penske driver until 2021, jumped ship and joined Roush Fenway Racing not just as a driver, but also as a co-owner. Ever since he joined the team, Keselowski has imparted his ideals flawlessly into the team’s set up and as the regular season came to a close this year, his efforts bore fruit.

Chris Buescher was the star of the show in the latter part of the regular season. He won back-to-back races in Richmond and Michigan and followed it up with a dominant victory at the final regular-season race at Daytona. That day, Brad Keselowski finished in second place to make it an incredible 1-2 finish for the team. All this while, Team Penske was nowhere to be found.

Both drivers have made it into the round of 12 of the playoffs and are both sitting atop the cut line ahead of the round of 8. Buescher sits in third, and Keselowski finds himself in seventh place, 8 points ahead of the drop zone. The only Penske driver in the playoffs, Ryan Blaney, is in 11th, 11 points behind the cutline.

Keselowski has obviously done what his former team boss, Roger Penske, has not been able to do. And this was acknowledged by his ex-teammate Logano.

“We all have the same bodies, the same noses on the car, he’s running a Ford, I’m running a Ford. You know, and we share all our aero information and you know, we have the same engines in the cars, like there’s…the cars are the same. They’re just doing it in a different way as far as the way they set up their cars and the little trinkety stuff that they’re…just somehow put together a better package than us right now,” he said.

“They’re faster than us right now. Yeah, all hands on deck to try and figure that out and what it is but it’s…they have the same golf club, they’re holding it in a different way and they’re swinging it better. Like that’s kind of what’s going on right now so we just got to figure that piece out,” the defending Cup Series champion added.

Logano is obviously angry and frustrated with how the season unfolded. As the defending champion, he would have expected his team to provide him with a competitive car, but if anything, Team Penske has been like the underdogs. Fans weren’t happy with how the team performed this season either and the 2022 champion welcomed the criticism.

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Joey Logano welcomes criticism from fans after the poor season

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The #22 Ford Mustang has simply not been up to the mark this year. Logano’s only victory came at Atlanta early on this season and he has been forced to retire from races a total of five times so far: Las Vegas, Dover, Pocono, and both Bristol races.

In the same post, he can be heard saying, “The fact that there is frustration does not bother me. That’s a good thing! I’m glad people are pissed off about it. I’m angry, really angry about it! And that’s a good thing. There is nothing wrong with being mad about not being good. That’s a good thing that you’re mad about it.”

“You got to be a team. You have to work together, and you have to be honest with each other. No matter who it is. Let’s talk it out and look at every little piece there is to try to get better,” he added.

Logano’s focus will be on the 2024 season. Quite frankly, after the year he has had, the end of the season cannot come soon enough. Team Penske will need to regroup and figure out what went wrong in 2023 so that they can mount a strong comeback in the near future.

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