Ryan Blaney reveals how Penske approaches teammates becoming competitors in NASCAR playoffs

Teammates have been the name of the game in the NASCAR Cup Series after the beef between Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs came to light at New Hampshire. Ryan Blaney doesn’t have those problems at Team Penske.

The winner at New Hampshire this past weekend joined the latest episode of the Dale Jr. Download. During his appearance, Dale Earnhardt Jr. wanted to get inside of Blaney’s head, wondering how Team Penske would deal with a similar incident.

“In your organization, y’all have gone into the finals and raced each other in the championship at Phoenix, nose-to-tail. So how far into this process does the working together continue?” Earnhardt Jr. prefaced. “At what point, I guess—I mean, maybe it’s already there—maybe you already have that confidence, and you’re kind of looking across the table at the comp meeting going, ‘It’s you and me.’ But, you know.”

Evidently, Blaney believes there’s no team more equipped to handle the idea of teammates in competitive motorsports. From the top down, Team Penske is high quality, and it’s what’s led to their immense success over the past couple of seasons.

“I guess I’ll put it into perspective for you. I think our team—all of Team Penske and the Wood Brothers—we work better together than anybody else,” Blaney responded. “Like, any other team. I feel like our communication line from the drivers, engineers, crew chiefs—it’s ten times better than everybody else. And I can just speak on that because I’ve got buddies on other teams, and we kind of compare, and it’s like, man, we do a little bit more.

“A great example is Joey and I raced for the championship last year at Phoenix. Same comp meetings, same discussions. How are we both going to be better? Nothing changed. You know that’s your competition, but we’re still trying to figure out, ‘How do we run one-two in this deal?’

“Roger doesn’t care who runs first or second. He just wants us to run first and second. That’s how it’s always been. And I think that’s the expectation Roger’s always put on us: if we’ve got one car, two cars, three cars in this deal, we’re going to try our best to all finish one-two-three, or something like that. And that just comes from Roger.

“And I’d say the racing around each other—there’s never team orders. Ever. The only thing Roger has ever said is, ‘Just don’t wreck each other trying to win the race.’ Don’t be foolish and run one-two and wreck each other out of first and second. He has an expectation: race as hard as you want. Have at it. I don’t care who runs first or second. But please do not wreck each other doing it, because then we just look like a bunch of fools.”

There’s a reason Logano and Blaney are the most recent champions in the NASCAR Cup Series, and why they could be headed to battle for another title in 2025. Team Penske may be forgotten about at times, but they continue to ascend when the playoffs roll around year-in and year-out, and there’s a reason for that.