Penske on the ropes

When you have winners, you also have losers. And in this round of the playoffs, the wheels are falling off at Team Penske.

The Fords seemed to be dominant early at Talladega, putting Joey Logano or Ryan Blaney in a position to claim a victory, but their strategy fell apart at end. Some of their fellow Ford drivers couldn’t give the Penske drivers the push they needed due to being low on fuel, and both Penske playoff contenders faded to the rear in final laps.

Now, both Logano and Blaney are in must-win situations headed into the Martinsville race if they want to make the Final Four, trailing 4th place driver Kyle Larson by 38 and 47 points.

Logano spoke about what happened at the end of Talladega, and the struggles the Fords faced.

“It’s pretty apparent the second we lost control of the race. I’m only driving one car, so I couldn’t really control the race. The car behind me was saving gas, that didn’t help us and killed the whole bottom lane,” Logano said. “Cars were pulling in front of us and we were just getting demoted from the first two cars in line to the back of the line. We just can’t be saving gas at the end of the race.”

Hendrick’s woes multiply on last lap

Another team whose playoff drivers picked a terrible race to have an off-day at Talladega was Hendrick Motorsports.

Only Kyle Larson is in decent shape, sitting 4th in points at 36 points above the cutoff line. But he could have been locked in to Phoenix already had he not ran out of gas and fell out of line on the last lap and ended up 26th.

His Hendrick teammate William Byron, fresh off a brutal wreck with Ty Dillon the previous week, got wrecked on the last lap at Talladega, and is now below the cut line and in a must-win situation. Without that wreck, he would likely have been close enough to advance with points, but that’s no longer the case.

Between the DIllon and Hocevar incidents, Byron has been the victim of two Chevy teammates in this critical time of the season, which Mr. H can’t be happy about, and there have already been ramifications with Ty Dillon’s spotter getting the boot.

Third Hendrick playoff driver Chase Elliott also got caught up in an early wreck not of his own doing, and must win at Martinsville to advance. So in summary, if it wasn’t for bad luck, Hendrick would’ve had no luck at all this past weekend, coming home in 25th, 26th, 29th and 40th with their four entries (historically, one of their worst overall team finishes ever).

Elliott spoke about his wreck, and said they have to look forward to Martinsville and focus on winning.

“I saw someone get turned sideways. I was trying to get slowed up like normal. I ended up getting turned sideways into some other cars, and then they slid back into me. I hate it. I felt like we had ourselves in a good spot. I can’t change it now, so we’re just all eyes on Martinsville and we’ll try to go there and get a win,” Elliott said.

Byron was unhappy with how the race concluded, understandably.

“Certainly, a finish would have helped us be a little bit closer on the points side of things. We just lost control of the race. We just couldn’t get the pushes going the way we needed to on the bottom lane. We got the outside lane clear down in front of us, and then Larson ran out of fuel there on the backstretch and that kind of broke up the energy a little bit more. We just couldn’t get it linked back together,” Byron said. “It was just wrong place, wrong time.”

Lack of cut line drama

As things stand, pointing into the Final Four from the bottom half is highly unlikely. So unless a driver below the cut line wins at Martinsville, it will be Hamlin, Briscoe (both locked in), plus Christopher Bell and Larson contending for the title next week at Phoenix.

While points drama will be limited, it’s important to note that should Elliott, Bryon, Logano or Blaney race their way into the Final Four with a victory, the battle for the fourth and final spot likely comes down to Bell (the spring winner at Phoenix) vs. Larson, so those two will be eyeing each others’ points totals all day and working to maximize stage points.

We won’t know until after the season ends if any changes are coming next year (rumors are a multi-race final round, or even going back to the original 10-race “Chase” format), but regardless, this year’s crown will be decided under the current format.

Penske has dominated the Phoenix race, and claimed the crown the past three years (2 titles for Logano, and 1 for Blaney), so the Final Four qualifiers will be rooting for Penske’s drivers to stay out of Victory Lane and not punch their ticket at Martinsville. So far, it’s going that direction, but anything can happen in an elimination race — especially at a short track where tempers are often heated.

---

Follow AutoTechReviews on Instagram at @autotechreviews, and on Twitter @AutoTechReview. Follow Matt Myftiu on Twitter @MattMyftiu.