With Ryan Blaney‘s 11th-hour victory last Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, Team Penske has a decided edge among NASCAR Cup Series powerhouses entering Sunday‘s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway (3 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).

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With both 2022 series champion Joey Logano and 2023 champion Blaney in the Championship 4, Team Penske is seeking its third consecutive title, a feat that hasn‘t been accomplished since Jimmie Johnson won five straight for Hendrick Motorsports from 2006 through 2010.

“Since Joey won that race at Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, locking him in, the excitement level and preparation level has really amped up at our shop in Mooresville (North Carolina), that‘s for sure,” Team Penske vice chairman Walt Czarnecki said Monday in a Zoom conference with reporters.

“Of course, Ryan‘s win (Sunday) has compounded it. Everybody was back at the shop (Monday) morning, hard at work. … We will be prepared, I promise you.”

Blaney also has a chance to do something no other driver has done since Johnson‘s five-year streak — win two titles in a row.

“It is so hard to win at this level, even one race,” Czarnecki said. “So, to put yourself in a position and have a team that‘s in a position to be back-to-back champion — and in our case, three championships in a row — is quite extraordinary.

“But again, it‘s a testimony to the people. It would mean a lot to us personally, and it would mean a lot to the sport.”

Hendrick Motorsports features one representative in the Championship 4 — but just barely. Daytona 500 winner William Byron qualified for the title race by four points after Joe Gibbs Racing‘s Christopher Bell was demoted four positions for riding the wall on the last lap in last Sunday‘s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville.

But for the penalty, Bell would have qualified for the Championship race on a tiebreaker. Instead, Byron will carry the banner in Hendrick‘s 40th-anniversary season.

“It‘s going to be a tough battle,” said Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon, a four-time Cup champion in his own right. “You‘ve got three other teams and drivers that are rock-solid. They all have their strengths, and they all can run good at Phoenix, so we‘re going to have to step up, no doubt.”

Byron won the pole and the first stage of last year‘s season finale at Phoenix but faded to fourth as the track changed later in the day. Blaney won the title with a runner-up finish to race winner Ross Chastain.

A Hendrick championship this year would be the capstone on a milestone season.

“It would be huge,” Gordon said, “but (team owner) Rick (Hendrick) and I talked about this last week before Martinsville about how excited we are of what we have accomplished this year — I mean 11 wins, all four cars in the playoffs, all four cars have won.

“We‘ve won big races, the Brickyard, Daytona. So, it‘s been a great year, and it‘s going to be a year that we celebrate because of what we‘ve accomplished over 40 years but especially what we‘re doing in this 40th year. Of course, to take it to the next level and make it a year we‘ll never forget, a championship, yeah, would certainly be the icing on the cake.”

Standing in the way of that accomplishment are not only the two Team Penske drivers but also NASCAR Cup Championship 4 newcomer Tyler Reddick of 23XI Racing, who qualified for the title race by winning on Oct. 27 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Reddick, in his second season with 23XI, has dealt with Championship 4 pressure in the Xfinity Series, winning consecutive titles for two different teams in 2018 and 2019 when the season finale was contested at Homestead.

“(Team co-owner) Denny (Hamlin) was the one who was zeroed in on going after and hiring Tyler Reddick,” said 23XI president Steve Lauletta. “He saw his talent, raced against him, knew that he is going to be a race-winning driver and champion driver at this level in the Cup Series like he was in Xfinity.

“We were focused on making sure we were able to get him. His work ethic is something special. His ability to get the most out of people on his team, his relationship with (teammate) Bubba (Wallace) is fantastic. He‘s just fit in as good as we‘d hoped for in the quick two years that he‘s been here.

“To give him the chance, and for him to work with us to be able to go to Phoenix and have a chance to race for 23XI‘s first championship is just all a testament to it being the right place for him to be and to take the next step in his career.”