Penske “kicked everyone’s ass” in NASCAR a week after Indy 500 controversy

Ryan Blaney believes Team Penske emphatically responded to its recent IndyCar controversy by “kicking everyone’s ass” in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Nashville.

Penske has been under intense scrutiny since IndyCar’s blue-riband event at Indianapolis after Josef Newgarden and Will Power were found to have run illegally modified rear attenuators during qualifying.

Both drivers as well as the team were hit with severe penalties by IndyCar, with the scandal dominating headlines in the lead-up to the event.

It also raised uncomfortable questions about the integrity of Team Penske and its founder Roger Penske, who also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar Series itself. In response, Penske took swift action by dismissing president Tim Cindric and two other senior staff members.

But just seven days after its disappointing run in the Indy 500, Team Penske rebounded strongly to win the Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway, with Blaney finishing two seconds clear of the #77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet of Carson Hocevar.

The win came despite unfounded speculation linking Penske’s NASCAR arm to the IndyCar controversy, despite there being no crossover between the two programmes.

“I hate it for those folks over there last week at Indy,” said Blaney. “For those guys to have to go through that. The people that got let go were really prominent figures in the company. It definitely stunk.

“But on our side, we just focused on kind of what we were doing, and RP told us all: things happen, and we’ve done things about them, and we’re going to move forward, and what’s the next step and how do we move on from this.

“We had to hear all week that Penske cars are bad because the INDYCAR guys got caught and that’s why we were bad at Charlotte and then we come here tonight and kick everyone’s ass.

“Ebbs and flows of this sport, it’s crazy. But it’s nice to…. I’m excited to talk to Roger because it’s been a tough couple weeks for him, and I’m really excited to talk to him on the phone tonight and kind of share some joy with him.”

Blaney’s result in the #12 Ford means all four Penske cars, including the affiliated Wood Brothers entry of Josh Berry, have scored at least one win so far in 2025.

All four are provisionally locked into the playoffs.

“I’ve been really proud of Team Penske and the Wood Brothers speed this year so far through the first dozen races,” said Blaney.

“For the last couple years we’ve struggled a little bit kind of getting going before the summer months, and I think we’ve figured it out come the fall and things like that or late summer.

“But I thought we just fired off this year with tons of speed, and was really proud of their efforts over the winter for that and carrying over what we accomplished at the end of last year and bringing it bigger and better at the start of this year.

“So it’s great to have everybody with a win and everybody locked in there, and hopefully we can just continue to rack it up. It’s nice that we have all the speed and all the teams are working very well together right now.

“Between myself and the 22, 2, 21, we’re all really in sync right now, and that’s tough to get when all four teams are really communicating great and we’re all playing off each other. That’s a really great thing that we have going on at our race shop.”