Ryan Blaney and the Team Penske No. 12 has been amongst the fastest cars in the NASCAR Cup Series over the first month and a half of the season but engine failures in two of the past three weeks have stalled some of their momentum.
The 2023 champions are still seeking their first win of the season despite having a car that has run up front virtually every race. In fact, Blaney led the most laps last weekend at Homestead Miami Speedway before that second engine failure of the season derailed a race that seemingly ran through him?
At Martinsville on Sunday, Blaney seemed to suggest there might have been a quality control issue in the engine build.
“We talked through it all week, with (Roush Yates Engines) and Penske and all of us being in discussions – ‘Hey, what happened? What went wrong? What was the cause of it?’ and we believe there were separate issues from Phoenix and Homestead,” Blaney said. “They’re working hard on trying to figure out why this issue at Homestead happened.
“We knew why the one at Phoenix happened. We kind of figured out that problem and I think we’ve got our arms around why this one at Miami happened and hopefully we’ve taken the correct procedures to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
While disappointed, Blaney isn’t taking any of his frustrations out on Roush Yates Engines either.
“It’s just unfortunate that two out of three weeks we’ve had an issue there, but those folks work really hard,” Blaney said. “I hadn’t had an engine failure in a long time, so it’s not like it’s common with those folks. It’s just one of those things. That’s a bummer, but I think we have a really good idea of what went wrong and they’re doing all they can to figure out how can we make that not happen again.”
Blaney also doesn’t believe driver error played a factor in his most recent engine failure either.
“Sometimes it is,” Blaney conceded. “You can look at data and say, ‘I really over-revved the downshift,’ but that really wasn’t the case. It was a separate issue, so we’ve just got to dig into why this happened.
“Was there a piece that was different or maybe made differently? They just kind of go back into the order of things, but they did a good job of trying to figure out what it was and now they’re taking big steps to make sure it doesn’t happen to any other Fords out there.”
Teammate Joey Logano conceded there is some concern amongst the camp.
“There’s obviously concern when you see something happen and you want to dissect what happened and understand if there’s something we can do to prevent it,” Logano said. “Was it a parts failure, did we run something too long or overheat it or over-rev it? What happened?
“Once you understand that, then you can move on. I’m not going to publicize what happened but that’s how you work through it. Once you understand went wrong, that’s how you fix it.”
Austin Cindric says ‘there has been a lot of conversation behind the scenes’ about it.
“It was just about understanding what that is and how it affects the rest of our cars,” Cindric said. “Or even if it does. Martinsville this weekend is obviously a different engine package for us in the demands it has and the shifting, it requires something more robust but we need to understand it and do the best we can to prevent those kinds of failures moving forward.”
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