Team Penske hopeful Vegas produces another step forward: ‘The potential’s there’

LAS VEGAS -- Team Penkse's Austin Cindric was easily best in class last weekend at Kansas Speedway, turning in a second-place finish that marked his best yet on a 1.5-mile oval behind a dominant Kyle Larson performance. Now it's up to Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney to find their best 1.5-mile speed as Team Penske pivots to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday afternoon (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in the fourth race in The Chase presented by Mobil 1. MORE: Starting lineup | Chase standings Logano enters Sunday's South Point 400 fourth in the championship standings, 67 points behind series leader Larson, with teammate Blaney behind him in fifth -- another 24 points behind Logano and 91 points behind Larson. Cindric's stellar Sunday at Kansas moved him up to ninth in points, but the 2022 Daytona 500 champion is still 140 markers back of Larson. Yet Cindric was again the top Penske driver on track Saturday at Las Vegas, qualifying his No. 2 Ford in seventh place as the top Ford behind five Toyotas and Larson's Chevrolet. Blaney qualified 20th with Logano 23rd -- the only Chase drivers to qualify outside the top 14. "Yeah, I definitely think it was our best intermediate qualifying of the year, You know, we were (31st) this time in the spring," Cindric said. "Our guys did a great job. I mean, having having a good draw helps as well. Going out that late gives a lot of confidence to watch other cars and know what to do. But no, I thought we made a lot of progress in a short amount of time on our Autotrader Ford Mustang in practice and obviously showed in qualifying for them." [caption id="attachment_527778" align="aligncenter" width="1300"]Chris Graythen | Getty Images[/caption] There is still optimism to be found in the Penske camp, albeit tempered through past 1.5-mile results. Blaney has a Penske-best average finish of 11.5 on 1.5-mile tracks this season while Cindric's 16.5 ranks 12th of the 16 Chase drivers; Logano's is a Chase-worst 20.3. But Kansas was encouraging: Blaney rallied to a fifth-place finish at Kansas after starting 25th and Logano averaged an 8.1 running position before falling to 20th with a late tire issue. "Definitely good momentum," Blaney said. "I was very pleased with our performance at Kansas. Like you said, the 2 car was really fast. I thought Joey was good most of the day before he had a problem there at the end, but the mile-and-a-halfs have been a place we've been really wanting to get better, and I think we made a good gain to get closer to some of those guys. I don't think it's fully out of reach. So I thought Austin had a great shot to win that race if a couple things go his way. So that's promising. Hopefully we've learned from last week and can apply them here." In a Wednesday teleconference, Logano said Cindric's Kansas run impacted the team's plans for Vegas immediately: "Hey, what do we want to try this weekend for setups and practice and how do we want to go about it?" That mindset was still in place Saturday in the moments ahead of Cup Series practice. "Yeah, it definitely adds a lot of confidence," Logano said. "It says the potential's there, right? They had a really fast car -- a car that probably could have won the race just with a couple little execution things being a little better. So the speed's there. That means the potential's there. It's just a matter of us getting it all out of it." Vegas will offer the latest test of Penkse's performance improvement. The organization has been incredibly successful since the summer, producing three wins for Logano and two for Blaney, bolstered by a few career days turned in by Cindric. But with previous disappointment on 1.5-mile race tracks, the question becomes whether its Kansas success is real or a flash in the pan. "I think a few weeks ago or the last month or so, you could probably attribute (Penske's recent success) to the track type, but we've kind of checked the box at least with one mile-and-a-half," Cindric said. "But yeah, I think as you said, it's a team. It's a whole group effort. ... It's a year's worth of work to get us to this point. So yeah, proud to have obviously that work pay off and hopefully be able to use that notebook to continue to excel for the remainder of the season."