Blaney’s Run An Exemplary Modern-Day NASCAR Championship
Credit: Alex Gould/USA Today Network
As Kevin Harvick famously said after the 2020 fall Martinsville race, "These championships aren't like winning like Petty and Earnhardt used to win them. You have to put them together three weeks at a time." Whereas legends of the past had to focus on week-to-week consistency, scraping as many points from a race as possible, modern-day NASCAR rewards a gradual buildup in performance leading into a late push for the title. The way in which teams approach trying to win the ultimate goal in the sport these days is far different than it ever has been before, and this year’s champion Ryan Blaney is a perfect example of that.
Rule number one of playoff racing is locking yourself in early with a win, which is exactly what the #12 team did. After a slightly underwhelming start to the season, Blaney showed up to the Coca-Cola 600 in May with a rocketship for a car, and motivation to win a crown jewel event. He dominated that night, leading a whopping 163 laps on his way to a convincing first win of the season. Up until that point, Penske had struggled at most non-superspeedway events, so the blistering pace they showed in the 600 sent a warning shot across the garage area. Everyone knew that the #12 team may not be consistent, but they could blow the doors off the competition if they got it right.
The rest of the regular season was unremarkable for Blaney, as he failed to consistently show the winning speed from Charlotte. A particularly brutal three race span of Sonoma, Nashville and Chicago saw him finish worse than 30th each time out. The points lead he had earned after his Coke 600 win and a subsequent sixth at Gateway was gone, dropping the second-generation star down to ninth overall. The team had a few good runs after that, but most weeks they were outside the top 10. Blaney entered the playoffs as the 12th overall seed with only a handful of playoff points to his name. While this wasn’t ideal for the #12 team, they had gotten their bad runs out of the way early, and had surely learned a thing or two they could take with them into the postseason as they visited many tracks for the second time.
Blaney snuck through the Round of 16 with finishes of 9th, 12th, and 22th. His pace was not vastly different than it had been during the regular season, but at the very least he and his crew chief Jonathan Hassler were finding ways to put together complete races. Troubles for other playoff contenders, including his Penske teammate Joey Logano, saw Blaney clear of the cutline at the conclusion of the elimination race at Bristol. The aforementioned Logano was caught up in a wreck midway through the night that left him unable to continue, and his points cushion was not large enough to get him into the Round of 12. With the defending cup champ eliminated, and teammate Austin Cindric not making the postseason at all, Ryan Blaney was left as Penske’s only remaining hope at winning a championship.
Another major rule of playoff racing is just surviving the first round. You don’t have to be particularly quick to make it through; just finish races and earn a few stage points here and there to get you by, which is exactly what Blaney did. But this left him with a six point gap to the cutline heading into the Round of 12, which grew to 11 points after he crashed out at Texas. Going into Talladega, the #12 team was faced with two options: finally find winning speed, or go home. A two-time Talladega winner and runner-up in the last two races there, Blaney knew this was his shot to make the Round of 8. And sure enough, he found himself up front at the end, and he drag raced Kevin Harvick (who would later be disqualified) to the checkered flag, beating him out and punching his ticket to the next round. All of a sudden, Ryan Blaney had momentum on his side, and even though he entered the penultimate round 10 points below the cutline, he had his eyes set on making it to Phoenix.
Credit: Julie Bennett/AP
If you want to win a championship in today’s NASCAR, you have to be elite in the final four weeks of the season. Just making it to the Championship 4 requires you to step up and beat the best of the best in the Round of 8, and if you do make it to Phoenix, you better plan on winning the race. Anything less than blistering pace isn’t going to cut it, and the #12 team knew that. They entered the race at Las Vegas ready to make a statement, which they did. A sixth place finish with some stage points was one of Blaney’s best results of the season, which set himself up well going into Homestead, where his speed was even better. The #12 team battled Kyle Larson all race long, ultimately finishing second to Christopher Bell but collecting near maximum points on the day. A pair of stage wins and a runner up result put Blaney above the cutline going into the final race of the round, with a 10 point cushion to his name.
He could have taken it easy and tried to play it conservative in the name of protecting his points lead at Martinsville, but Blaney didn’t want to leave it up to points to advance. He wanted to lock himself in with a win. And win he did, as Blaney was the fastest from start to finish, leading 145 laps overall in a dominating victory over a field of hungry playoff drivers. Now winners of two of the last five races, the #12 team were peaking at the right time, and it seemed like the field had no answer for them heading into Phoenix, a track Blaney had finished second at twice in the last two races. In the blink of an eye, Penske’s lone remaining playoff car had gone from a fringe contender to a potential championship favorite. They had completely turned things around at the perfect moment; now all they had to do was win the final race of the year.
Or so they thought, as Ross Chastain and Trackhouse had other ideas. The #1 car battled Blaney hard for the lead in the closing laps of the race, ultimately pulling away and stealing the victory. However, the fight for the championship was behind him, with Blaney battling Hendrick’s William Byron and Kyle Larson after the fourth championship contender, Christopher Bell, fell out early with mechanical troubles. Blaney had to find his way past both Byron and Larson in the final run if he wanted to take home the title, and time was running out. But, the 29 year-old from High Point, North Carolina dug deep, focused up, and fought past both Hendrick cars successfully, passing Larson with about 20 laps to go. He held on to finish second, which was good enough to take his first NASCAR Cup Series championship, and Roger Penske’s second in as many years. As the young man did donuts on the frontstretch and celebrated with his crew, the rest of the industry tipped their caps in respect for one of the greatest title pushes in recent NASCAR history.
In the final six races of the year, the most important stretch of the season, Ryan Blaney finished 1st, 12th, 6th, 2nd, 1st, and 2nd, a run of form rivaling the likes of late 2000s Jimmie Johnson. Blaney, Hassler, and the #12 team had laid low all year, quietly building up their notebook through trial and error, only to blast onto the scene when it mattered the most and win the ultimate prize. It was a textbook execution of how to put together a season under the current playoff format. You don’t have to be consistent the whole time, nor blazing fast; just lock yourself in early, build up speed over time, and come on strong when the chips are down and the title is up for grabs. Most three win seasons wouldn’t have been good enough to win the championship under old formats, but the way we do things now, it’s a very realistic possibility. They may not have been the fastest all year, or the most steady, or even the most mistake-free. But Ryan Blaney and the #12 team played their cards perfectly, and earned themselves the cup at year’s end. They showed the world a perfect example of how to win a modern-day Cup title, and the rest of the garage is going to look to take a page out of Ryan Blaney’s playbook if they want to take the championship from him next year.
