Team Penske stormed into the offseason with a Ryan Blaney victory and a Joey Logano top five, but its streak of NASCAR Cup Series championships ended after collecting titles from 2022 through 2024, handing the reins to Hendrick Motorsports after Kyle Larson exited Phoenix Raceway with the 2025 championship.
There is certainly disappointment for three-time champion Logano and 2023 title-winner Blaney that their reign is over. But both advanced to the Round of 8 two years in a row, and after being one spot short of another Championship 4 berth, Blaney couldn’t help but reflect with pride instead of regret.
“It’s been amazing what all of Team Penske has been able to do since 2022 and it was fun to be a part of it,” Blaney said at Phoenix Raceway ahead of the season finale. “It’s fun to be a part of a team that is winning and winning championships and have great people working for the organization. And yeah, it’s a shame that we don’t have a shot at it, but very proud of the effort that we’ve put in through the years and this year to try to get there. And yeah, just a little bit short, but that’s just the way it goes.”
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Logano was hoping for one last week of playoff intensity to end his season and become the first repeat champion since Jimmie Johnson’s string of five consecutive titles from 2006-10. The driver of the No. 22 Ford matched his 2024 totals in top fives (seven) and top 10s (13) and bettered his average finish from 17.1 to 15.3. But with just one win — down from four in 2024 — Logano couldn’t muster a final charge into the Championship 4.
“Obviously not everything we hoped for. Our goal is to win the championship every year and we fell short of that,” Logano said. “Our goals are really high. By the same token, I feel like there were moments of the year we looked really strong. There were moments of the year where we didn’t capitalize on opportunities to win that we could have, and then I look at the playoffs as OK. We didn’t really stack any wins in there, but we were able to work our way into the Round of 8 and be a threat up until the last race in Martinsville.
“I always say the goal every year when we start the playoffs is to make it 10 weeks of hell. Make sure you have the pressure on you for 10 weeks. Well, we got nine — nine hard weeks. That’s better than six, but it’s not exactly where you want to be. In some cases, you can look at it and say we’ve done a decent job, but on the other hand, it’s just not what our expectation is of ourselves.”
Blaney rallied the No. 12 team to the Championship 4 in both 2023 and 2024 with walk-off wins at Martinsville, but a runner-up effort there in 2025 left him on the outside looking in at Phoenix — where he went on to win the season finale.
“I thought our group, personally, was better this year than what we were last year,” Blaney said. “And I thought (in) ’24, we were even better than ’23. I feel like we’ve gotten better every year. I’m not a big stat-looker as far as judging success, and I know that we didn’t make the Champ 4 this year, but I feel like this team was even better than last year. Just our integrity of how we clawed back from some early miscues and a lot of DNFs early, and just the mental strength of this whole group. I was really proud. I was proud of my guys for getting better and better every week and every year.”
All four cars affiliated with Team Penske made the Cup Series Playoffs this season, with Austin Cindric wheeling the No. 2 Ford to a Talladega Superspeedway win this spring and Wood Brothers Racing’s Josh Berry scoring a March victory at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for his first Cup triumph.
Cindric led a career-high 325 laps in 2025, bettering his previous best by 69 laps, but the fourth-year racer earned just two top-10 finishes after scoring his Talladega victory in April. He leaves the season with less top fives and top 10s than he had in 2024 with a lower average finish, but Cindric felt he made progress this year. His average running position through 2025 was 16.9, according to NASCAR Loop Data, despite an average finish of 20.9.
“It’s definitely been my best season and most complete season behind a Cup Series car, but not getting the end results of races has been frustrating for us,” Cindric said. “Like even [at Martinsville], the worst we were running was where we finished, and that’s for a number of reasons. And it’s not just one race, but it’s a great example. I feel like there’s been so many races where we’ve had so much potential, and so I think we carry that, and you can either look at that as a negative or a positive.
“We’ve been in the hunt all year, and I think that’s been a big positive where I don’t feel like we really dropped the ball at all. That’s from the top down on the 2 car. So I feel like as a group as well, I’m really proud of my guys, because I feel like we’re really contributing at a high level to the team as a whole, and I think that’s really important for us moving forward.”
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Through Wood Brothers Racing’s affiliation with Team Penske, Berry was new to the group as driver of the iconic No. 21 Ford. A miserable Round of 16 left Berry with no shot to advance through the postseason, but the sophomore Cup driver adapted quickly to Penske’s methods throughout the campaign after spending his rookie year at Stewart-Haas Racing.
“Going back to these places for a second, third time definitely made me feel more comfortable, and obviously in a much different situation than I was in last year,” Berry said. “Obviously, had a great group around me last year, but the place was closing down so it made it difficult on all of us. I think having the group I have around me, I’m excited for next year, excited to build off what we did this year. And I think there’s a lot of positives to look from our season.”
Cindric and Blaney echoed how well Berry has fit into the group, with all four drivers working well together to drive each other toward better performance. Cindric has been in the Cup Series two years longer than Berry, but Berry’s extensive stock-car background racing late models gives him a particularly unique vantage point compared to Cindric, who grew up racing a variety of vehicles, including sports cars, rally cars and open-wheel cars.
“I think Josh has been a great fit … whether if that’s from team dynamics in meetings or speedway racing, or just kind of thoughts in general,” Cindric said. “He kind of brings in a different perspective, especially than I have. I mean, you can’t really pick two more different guys as far as their racing backgrounds than myself and Josh. I haven’t even sat in a late model where he could probably build one before I could ever figure out how to drive it. So, no, it’s been good to have him, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him.”
What comes next for Team Penske to find itself back in the championship hunt in 2026? First comes a reset, Logano said — “I think it’s important to take a second and take a breather” — but then it’s back to the grind to figure out where things went awry.
“You’ve got to do something different because what we did wasn’t good enough, so you can’t do the same thing and expect a different outcome,” he said. “We have to look to do some different things, and how can we approach things differently. How do we approach race weekend? What do we have to do to be faster on the race track? We just have to try to be better because the bottom line is we were not good enough. That’s the fact. There’s no way to hide from that. You can’t make up all these different scenarios on why you weren’t. We weren’t good enough, so we have to identify those weaknesses and figure out what to do to change those, and that will happen really quickly.”
Blaney knows perfection isn’t possible, but that goal is still the standard at Penske after three straight championship triumphs.
“You’re never going to be perfect for years and years on end,” he said. “You’re going to have to go through some times where you’ve got to figure out how do we be a little bit better than what we were?”