Logano, Blaney frustrated with 'soft' bottom lane near Talladega finish

Team Penske drivers Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney were where they wanted to be late Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, but felt the lack of help from behind changed the outcome.

“We just can’t be saving gas at the end of the race,” Logano said after finishing 16th. “Ryan was not, but I was frustrated. You just get demoted in the lane as cars move to the front. You’re helpless. You’re sitting there just driving in circles, knowing the right thing to do, and just can’t do it.”

On the second-to-last restart, with 17 laps to go, Blaney and Logano led the inside lane with two other Ford drivers behind them in Brad Keselowski and Chris Buescher. Blaney and Logano stayed hooked together down the backstretch while Keselowski and the rest of the lane faded. But on the outside, Todd Gilliland was leading the line, and when clear of Blaney, moved to the bottom.

The runs never developed from the Penske duo after Gilliland moved in front of them as the bottom lane continued to fade lap after lap. As the laps clicked off, more and more drivers were able to move to the bottom lane and push Blaney and Logano further back in the running order.

“I have to rewatch it, but the [No.] 6 was soft for some reason behind Joey,” said Blaney after finishing 23rd. “We got control of the race, me and Joey had control of it, and from what I can tell, the [No.] 6 was super soft on Joey, and then the [No.] 34 got down in front of me, and the [No.] 6 was still soft on Joey, and we just could never go and faded. I thought we did a great job getting the spot we were in, but it didn’t work out.”

Blaney and Logano had been shuffled outside the top 10 by the time the final caution flew with two laps to go. Adding insult to injury, both drivers had to pit for fuel under the caution.

“It’s just frustrating,” Logano said. “It’s pretty apparent when we lost control of the race, but I’m only driving one car. … The car behind me was saving gas; that doesn’t help. That kills the whole bottom lane; cars are pulling down in front of us and we kept getting demoted from the first two cars to third in line, fourth in line, and the next thing you know we’re all the way in the back.”

Penske could potentially be locked out of the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway after winning the last three championships between Logano and Blaney.

Logano views it as a must-win as he’s 38 points behind a transfer spot.

“It’s not a bad track for us,” Logano said. “It’s simple what we need to do at this point: it’s all or nothing. Stage points aren’t going to matter. Nothing is going to matter.”

Blaney is the two-time and defending winner of the elimination race at Martinsville Speedway, but he didn’t want to hear about that.

“So what?” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen year to year. You have people who have been saying, ‘Oh, Blaney’s going to win Martinsville.’ That’s [expletive]. It’s hard. I don’t know what speed we’re going to have. It’s nice we’ve won there a couple of times, but we’re going to have to dig down deep for this one, for sure.”