Team Penske has three cars on the grid every Sunday, but through the early stretch of the 2026 season, they have not looked like they belong to the same organization. While Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 has been consistently fast, Joey Logano‘s No. 22 and Austin Cindric’s No. 2 have been left searching for answers. The gap has been hard to ignore, and now one of NASCAR’s most outspoken voices has decided to say out loud what many have been thinking quietly.
Kyle Petty did not mince words during a recent segment on PRN. Using Bristol as his reference point, he laid out exactly what he sees as the problem. “They qualified what — pole? Seventh or eighth with Cindric and 28th or 29th with Joey, and that’s the way he’s been all year,” Petty said. “They just don’t have speed, and Joey needs speed to start, to get up front and run there, because it’s a totally different race coming from the back.”
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Co-host Doug Rice jumped in with a question that cut straight to the point. “What else do you build a race car for?” Petty found it hard to argue. “That’s exactly right,” he said. “So when you build a car and take it to the racetrack and don’t have it, but your teammates have it — did it just mysteriously go from your shop to their shop?”
It is a fair question, and one that does not have a clean answer. NASCAR insiders have pointed to what they describe as a “gulf” inside the Penske organization, one that runs deeper than a bad week or two.
Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic summed it up plainly: “There’s such a disconnect between what the No. 12 team is able to do most weeks and what their teammates are able to do. Why does that gulf exist? Who knows?”
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The numbers back it up. After seven races, Logano is 12th in the standings, 168 points behind leader Tyler Reddick, who already has four wins. The low point came at Darlington, where Logano finished 33rd as the only driver three laps down, because the car had no pace. He was heard slamming his car over the radio, expressing frustration that had been building for weeks.
Joey Logano has not tried to hide how he feels about it. “No, I’m not okay. And no, we shouldn’t be okay with it either,” he said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. He stopped short of pointing fingers, instead focusing on what comes next. “There’s not much you can do about the past. You just have to keep grinding and moving forward.”
That resilience is something Gluck acknowledged, noting that Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe have always had a knack for extracting results even when raw speed is not there. But he stopped short of calling them a championship threat, saying Penske needs to reach the level of Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing to contend seriously.
In perspective, the performance gap is one problem. The timing of it is another. Logano now finds himself on the wrong end of a slow start, with a different race format this season.
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Joey Logano supported the old format, but the new one is exposing his struggles early
When NASCAR announced the return of the Chase format ahead of the 2026 season, Logano was measured in his response. He had won three championships under the elimination-style playoff: in 2018, 2022, and 2024. He was one of the few willing to admit he actually liked the old system.
“Personally, I was one of the rare people who liked the old one just from a fan perspective,” he said. “I enjoyed it, but if the majority doesn’t like that, then sure, we’ll change it.”
What made the elimination format work for Logano was this: he could afford a rough regular season as long as he peaked at the right time. His 2024 title run is the clearest example of that, finishing 15th in the regular season standings before winning during the postseason.
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The Chase does not offer that safety net. Logano had said so himself. “The bad days are going to be harder to recover from. Consistency is going to pay off more,” he acknowledged. “If you’re 12th or so going into the playoffs, I don’t think you can win it from that far back. You’re going to have to be really, really, really good to make that happen.”
Currently in 12th place, Joey Logano is not panicking. The same is evident in how he chooses to answer the fans, who raise questions about his performance.
“There’s still a long way to go in the season,” he said. “If you put together a couple of strong races, you can be back in the top five before you know it.”
But with Tyler Reddick sitting four wins deep and the No. 22 car still looking for speed, the format Logano once knew is no longer in his corner, and Kyle Petty’s question is still hanging in the air.
