Under scrutiny, Penske drivers look to keep Talladega momentum going

TALLADEGA, Ala. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. says it wasn’t an open letter to NASCAR, his call to crew chief Greg Ives over the team radio following the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway. It was simply post-race downloading, he said, of his observation of how Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano had been prone to post-race swerving or hard down-shifting, he believed, to reset the rear suspensions of their Fords into legality.

When Earnhardt noted in post-race interviews how fast Keselowski and Logano had been, hoping aloud that his team could usurp some of the information creating the Penske speed, he was just showing admiration for a competitor. Earnhardt assumed Hendrick Motorsports would have the secret eventually, he said, because that’s how gains are made in the garage. Figure it out first, or figure it out best, and optimally, when it matters most.

If Earnhardt had been trying to send a message, it worked. NASCAR this week penalized Logano for a rear suspension post-race failure after winning at Richmond International Raceway, sapping his first victory of the season the power to grant Logano an automatic playoff berth. Gone also are five valuable playoff points to carry through the postseason.

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But, again, no, Earnhardt said on Friday at Talladega Superspeedway, this week didn’t mark the end of a successful campaign.

“It wasn’t a plea to NASCAR at all,” said Earnhardt, who has a career-best six wins at the restrictor plate track. “There is an etiquette or kind of an unspoken code in the garage … if you go up in the hauler and complain to NASCAR about something you see, that is not well-appreciated by anybody else in the garage. There are guys that do that, but it’s not really appreciated.

"Like I say, you try to figure out what guys are doing to find speed and create something better, build a better mousetrap.

Logano said his team had “pushed a little bit too far,” in manipulating his car but said the unapproved adjustment would not have made his car any faster.

It wasn’t the first time for Team Penske this season, apparently. Keselowski was docked 35 driver points for a “weights and measures” post-race infraction after finishing fifth at Phoenix Raceway. Because of that sanction, crew chief Paul Wolfe sat out the second of a three-race suspension this weekend while awaiting his final appeal next week. Logano was without crew chief Todd Gordon, who is suspended for two weeks. Penske will not appeal that penalty.

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Again, no offense meant, Earnhardt said.

“Any time a team, no matter who it is, figures something out its impressive the ingenuity and engineering going on in the garage trying to figure out a way around the rulebook,” he said. “It’s been going on ever since they made the first rulebook.  As a driver and someone that knows a little bit about the mechanics of the car it’s always impressive when you see what guys can come up with to try to find speed in these cars.”

Team Penske has found speed in their cars throughout the season — Keselowski has a co-series leading two wins — and Penske cars have won the last three Cup races at Talladega. But the rate at which the best car wins in restrictor-plate racing can be frustrating for those driving or engineering it. Gains made at other tracks don’t necessarily apply in restrictor-plate racing. So “bold moves” will again be required this weekend, Keselowski said, to help Penske win at the 2.66-mile track for the fourth time in five seasons.

“At this point in time we have a series of moves that are pretty strong and have put us in a position to win a lot of plate races at Team Penske,” Keselowski said, “with a little of the car but a lot of things Joey and I have learned and worked on together and worked off of. But those moves will eventually become irrelevant and it’ll be something different, and I know that. And that’s ok.

“So hopefully, that time period will last a long time. History shows it won’t. I look at probably the last three years on the plate tracks, and I feel like Joey and I have been the most successful, and we hope to be able to continue the same trend.”

But everybody’s watching. Everything. And learning.

Follow James on Twitter @brantjames

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