Team Penske is having a somewhat surprising season, with their usual lead driver, Joey Logano, unable to find any semblance of form. While Logano has been struggling, it’s Ryan Blaney doing the heavy lifting at Team Penske. 

While the No. 12 driver sits third in the leaderboard with nine top-10s and the only Ford win, Joey Logano, a three-time Cup champion, sits 18th. Logano now has only five top-10s after the Michigan race and is dangerously close to elimination. 

While Logano has struggled, so have most Ford cars across the circuit, with Ryan Blaney being miles ahead of any other Ford driver. The No. 22 Team Penske Ford crew chief, Paul Wolfe, spoke about their growing problems on Sirius XM. 

Wolfe said, “You just look at Ford as a whole right now. Obviously, it’s we don’t have the same speed that the Toyotas have. And do I know exactly where that is? No, I mean, typically just my past experiences when you want to talk about car potential, right? And making that speed that guys talk about him.”

Wolfe was speaking to Sirius XM about the kind of form Logano has shown and how Ford cars aren’t as good as the Toyotas run by the like ok JGR and 23XI. He also spoke about having an issue identifying what's going on with Logano’s car.

“You have one car that seems to be performing better. We all kind of use them as our baseline. And then from there, we’re just trying to go through this process of okay, if we give that set up oe whatnot to Joey, how does he respond, how does it fit his driving style? Because that’s the piece that’s a little different for every driver.”

Wolfe was clear that there is a problem that is currently difficult to identify, which is what they need to fix before Logano can perform at his consistent best. 

Not A Straight Fix For Logano’s Ford

Wolfe stressed that Penske understands the pedigree of Logano and just what he is capable of, but the struggle is that the Ford isn’t suiting him like it is suiting Blaney. 

Wolfe said that the perspective of being able to gain half a second needs to change to being able to find tenths of a second first. He said, “Unfortunately, we’re just not finishing that piece at the moment.”

Wolfe said that the fix isn’t an easy one. While he openly admitted that the Ford is not anywhere near the Toyotas in terms of performance, he also stressed that finding that kind of speed quickly is difficult. 

“Typically, it’s aero and motor, right? Those are the big pieces consistently. We’ve been on the other side of this, and we’re just all the time; it doesn’t matter what shocks and springs you have or if your balance is off a little bit, you’re just fast, and it’s easier. Right now, we don’t have that. It’s a tough time, and there’s no easy answer.”

While Penske tries to figure out the best way to get Logano to go faster and find more performance, time is running out for Logano to make the Chase with just 12 races left.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason