The reigning Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship team looks to make it back-to-back titles in 2019.
The three-car Team Penske unit returns led by last year’s champ Joey Logano in the No. 22 Ford. Brad Keselowski is back in the No. 2 entry with Ryan Blaney rounding out the stable driving the No. 12 ride.
After reaching the pinnacle last year with his first Cup title, there is no slowing down for Logano, who remains energized to continue finding success.
“There’s no end in sight for me,” said Logano, who will again be paired with crew chief Todd Gordon. “I’ve got to keep going and keep moving forward and keep trying to grab more and the stats are fun to grab. To try and click off some of those marquee events that would be cool – Southern 500, Brickyard 400, Coke 600. But really it’s nothing like winning championships.”
Keselowski won a trio of races in 2018 all coming during a three-race winning streak late in the regular season. He’s optimistic about more trips to Victory Lane starting with the season’s first race at Daytona.
“Daytona is, of course, the 500, one major I don’t have,” Keselowski answered when asked what race to win is highest on the list. “I feel like it’s a race we’ve been competitive at. We had opportunities to win it. For a number of reasons, it hasn’t come together, which is sometimes unsettling. People ask me all the time, What race is the one that got away? It’s the 500, has been so far. I want to change that.
“We have a great opportunity to do that this year. We have a rules package we’re pretty familiar with. The Ford Mustang has now come out. It looks like it’s going to be a killer car.”
Blaney put one win on the board last season when he took the checkered flag at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. He believes consistency is going to be a benefit for an even better year ahead.
“We have every single person back on our team that was there in 2018 so that’s a huge deal,” Blaney said. “We are looking to keep improving and keep moving on and get better year by year.”
Audio: NASCAR Live 2019 Season Preview
Like the rest of their Ford brethren, the Penske group will make the change from Fusion to Mustang. The new model will coincide with the introduction of the radically different rules package Cup Series teams will utilize this year making it a challenging year for everyone. But a test session earlier this month at Las Vegas Motor Speedway has provided confidence.
“We were pretty good, and I feel like, if we’re as fast as we were today when we come back to race, I feel like we’ll be a threat to win,” Keselowski said. “(The car) is about as different as it can be, but it’s our job to master it and be the best with it.
“I feel like we learned some things and got better, and that’s kind of what you expect when you have something so much different than what we’re normally accustomed to, but I’m glad to see that’s how it played out.”
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