Ryan Blaney Comes Clean on Team Penske’s Plan to Pressurize Entire Cup Garage at Atlanta

Fuel-saving strategy is the new normal at the Superspeedway track. Thanks to the Next Gen car and parity racing, the cars are forced to race in a pack, and this allows the drivers to save fuel while they are in a draft. The cars behind the leaders can even run half throttle and still manage to keep up with the field. What is the advantage of it? Less time on the pit road and jump position when recycling, that is what superspeedway racing has turned into. Not racing, but executing the strategy, and Team Penske came prepared with the plan.

Joey Logano, Josh Berry, Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric were starting up front, so they were going to be in command of the race. Ideally, the Penske cars were looking to control the tempo of the Quaker State 400, but they soon realized that pushing hard would force the entire field to keep up with them. Blaney opened up about his team’s tactics while looking back at the wreck fest that ensued last weekend.

Team Penske wasn’t able to execute their plans in Atlanta

In a recent Podcast released by Door Bumper Clear, Ryan Blaney was asked whether his team thought about fuel saving for the race. Blaney replied, saying, “We thought about it. Then we thought that our cars were fast enough that if we could all four get in line and just push the pace and kind of string it out we just force everybody else to use more gas too you know so uh there was all these different options but even like that we kind of controlled everybody like Joey and Josh would be like bottom and like Brad kept slipping like the two for a while to the bottom and then I’d just run the middle with the two and like we kind of held everybody at bay.” 

Well, this plan backfired as drivers soon realized they could break the draft and lines and mount the charge to gain track position. This also meant drivers testing the limit on their cars and wrecking themselves and Christopher Bell on Lap 57 spun himself around and causing a stack-up. Ryan Blaney was the first Penske car to be taken out of the race, and this was his sixth DNF of the 2025 season. Fortunately, Austin Cindric and Joey Logano were able to score good points; Cindric won stage 1, and Logano finished 3rd.

However, they suffered a similar fate to Blaney, trying to keep the rivals at bay. A Big One on Lap 69 took all the Penske drivers out. “But it’s harder to do at Atlanta, like if you run two by two at Atlanta, like Daytona and Talladega, you can run two by two and kind of control the pace of like killing the third lane. Then you know, saving gas while doing that in Atlanta’s way way harder,” Blaney added. Unlike Daytona and Talladega, Atlanta allows drivers to try multiple lanes, which is why we saw 46 lead changes and a thrilling race finish.

The wild card race delivered chaotic results. Blaney and his team didn’t just lose points, but also a shot at winning the $1 million prize; they were knocked out of the In-Season challenge.

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Blaney isn’t sold on Atlanta hype

Is Atlanta Motor Speedway the best racetrack on the NASCAR schedule? This was the conversation on social media and NSACAR circles after the end of the Quaker State 400. Chase Elliott winning the race in the last lap pass to snap his 44-race winless streak was just special. To top it off, the likes of Brad Keselowski, Tyler Reddick, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. also added to the drama, no one knew who was going to win until the last lap.

Heck fans rated the Atlanta race as the second best, with 90.5% of them rating it as a good race on Jeff Gluck’s poll. But Blaney wasn’t sold on the hype. “I mean, it is entertaining to watch. Any racer will say like, I prefer the old Atlanta from a racer standpoint. Fand didn’t like it, it’s strung out and stuff like that and Atlanta now is more packed up an stuff. But yeah, it’s a spectacle for sure. Is it like an amazing racer’s race? No, like, it’s just pandemonium chaos.”

From an entertainment standpoint, the Quaker State 400 delivered on all fronts, and as long as that continues, NASCAR would feel that they did a good job with the repave back in 2021.