LAS VEGAS — The steady progress made behind the scenes at Team Penske is finally translating on intermediate tracks. Its trio of teams reaped the rewards at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, putting all three entries inside the top 10 and keeping the organization’s championship hopes firmly intact.
Despite Austin Cindric and Ryan Blaney cracking the top five in last week’s showdown at Kansas Speedway, questions remained about whether Team Penske had truly turned the corner at the 1.5-mile tracks in the heart of The Chase presented by Mobil 1. Was Kansas merely a blip, or could the organization sustain its upward trajectory in Sin City?
The two champion teammates of Blaney and Joey Logano wasted little time climbing up the leaderboard from mid-pack starting spots in Sunday’s South Point 400. Blaney raced to third in the opening stage, with Cindric two positions behind. Logano narrowly missed out on stage points, taking the green-and-checkered flag in 12th place.
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While championship hopefuls stumbled throughout the 267-lap affair, all three Penske cars remained steady. The lone misstep came from the No. 2 team, which fumbled its pit stop at the conclusion of Stage 1. A Lap 94 debris caution gave crew chief Brian Wilson an opportunity to get ahead of the strategy, however, calling Cindric to pit road while the bulk of the field stayed out. Cindric then stretched his fuel mileage to the end of the stage, finishing runner-up to Chase Briscoe.
“We didn’t start the race necessarily as close as we needed to and didn’t start practice as close as we needed to, but the guys worked on it all day and gave us some strengths that we didn’t have before,” Cindric said after the race, earning consecutive top-five finishes for the first time in his 182-race career. “It takes a great team.”
Blaney scored 15 stage points Sunday afternoon, tied with Cindric for third-most in the race. During a caution-free final segment, Cindric passed his teammate to finish fourth, giving both drivers top-five finishes in consecutive weeks. Logano rounded out the top 10.
With Kyle Larson’s early woes, Blaney gained 11 points on his championship deficit, now 80 markers behind the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Logano surrendered only four points to the championship lead, merely a net positive for the No. 22 team at an intermediate track.
“Our mile-and-a-half stuff has definitely been getting better and better,” Blaney told NASCAR.com. “Props to everybody for that. That’s encouraging. Just try to keep going; try to take little chunks at a time.
“I think we’re definitely on the right path. I do think there’s a little way to go for raw speed, especially early in runs — [Briscoe] was lights out early in runs. He faded but built the gap to where we couldn’t quite make it up. We’re getting there, but definitely not where we want to be, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”
Logano was pleased with the progress from the Las Vegas race in March, when he took the checkered flag in 15th. That makes consecutive strong performances at 1.5-mile tracks for the No. 22 team, though he corded a tire in the waning laps at Kansas and limped to 20th in the final rundown.
“There were moments where we were good on the short run and moments we were good on the long run, but having both, it was hard to have that,” Logano said. “Just an OK day. But OK on a mile-and-a-half is improvement for us.”
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Cindric remains ninth on the Chase grid and needs to convert a few Hail Marys to erase a 128-point deficit with five races remaining in the 2026 season. Logano (minus-71) and Blaney (minus-80), meanwhile, still believe they are within striking distance, particularly with the way the back half of the postseason schedule is shaping up.
“We’re close enough to say we can do it,” Logano said. “We’re right on the edge, though. We can race with nothing to lose because we’re right on that edge of being able to win the championship.”
Said Blaney: “Still doable. I would have rather gained 11 today than lose 11.”
The swing of intermediate races concludes on Sunday at Charlotte Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where Penske earned a pair of top 10s (Blaney seventh, Logano eighth) during the Coca-Cola 600 in May.