DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – For the first time in his young career, 24-year old Ryan Blaney arrived at Pocono Raceway this weekend as the defending Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race winner.
He had to out-run veterans Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick in the closing laps to earn that career-making trophy last June. And interestingly enough. … it’s those same two competitors Blaney and the rest of the Cup drivers have been chasing this year.
Busch and Harvick have combined for nine wins through 13 races and led an incredible 39 percent of all race laps this year. However, Blaney has been on their heels all season – his 418 laps out front is best among all the other drivers.
The Team Penske driver led a race-high 118 of the 200 laps in the season-opening Daytona 500 only to finish seventh. But he has three top fives and six top 10s this season. The stumbling block has been back-to-back DNFs in the last two races. But Blaney showed up at Pocono smiling, feeling absolutely and understandably confident, this could be the track to straighten things out.
“It is always nice to come back to a place you have had success at and won at,” said Blaney, who will drive the No 12 Menards Ford this week. “It gives you confidence as a driver and as a whole team everyone’s confidence is up. Obviously, you want to repeat that. You want to win every week but when you come back to a place where you have had success that definitely is nice. Especially after the last couple of weeks.
“We have struggled the last couple of races after having fast cars. That is almost like an extra slap in the face when you have fast cars and have problems like that. It just makes it that much worse. The good news is we do have fast cars right now and it is a matter of putting everything together, from not getting into accidents to braking. We need to get on the right track here. We are poised to do that.”
Even before Blaney’s big win at Pocono last year, the 2.5-mile triangular track had been a good venue for him. He was 11th-place in his two previous starts before winning.
As for any need to “push” himself, the typically laidback Blaney remained committed to his and his team’s style of taking things as they come. Yes, the last two weeks have been frustrating, but the ability to forget and keep looking forward is a large part of his success on track and likeability off track. He has always been calm and shown perspective well beyond his years.
“I don’t think it will be a sense of relief because the stress level on our team about it isn’t very high,” Blaney explained. “We aren’t like, ‘Oh, we haven’t won a race yet. Oh my God what are we going to do?’
“When it happens, it happens. You go out each week and you forget last week. Everyone has forgotten it by Tuesday morning when they go in the race shop and focus on Pocono. We will do the same thing after this race whether we win or finish 30th. We will go focus on Michigan.
“I think that is what our team does really well. As far as leading a bunch of laps and not getting a win, I don’t really look at laps led and stuff like that. I just go try to run the best I can and whatever happens, happens. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. You just try to learn from your mistakes from the previous race and if you find yourself in those situations at a later date then hopefully you learned from that and try to do better.”
Blaney elaborated on his high profile move from the venerable Wood Brothers team – his win last year was the 99th for the team – to Team Penske, where he teams with Cup champion Brad Keselowski and perennial title contender Joey Logano driving for one of the newest selections for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, team owner Roger Penske.
A lot is expected and a lot is bestowed at Team Penske, which just collected its 17th Indianapolis 500 win Sunday. All three NASCAR drivers are currently ranked among the top-11 in the Cup standings – Logano is second, Keselowski is fourth and with the two recent DNFs Blaney is now 11th after leading the championship points early in the season.
“We have one of the best teams in the garage as far as working with each other,” Blaney said of the Penske operation. “I think our cars are pretty good to where they are close to where they need to be. We aren’t quite there yet. Obviously, there are a couple cars that are beating everybody week in and week out but I think we are right there.
“We just need to find that little bit and put a weekend together. I don’t know. As far as driving, I could do better. I make mistakes. I hit the wall. I wrecked myself at Kansas with a winning car. Just have to be a little smarter and I haven’t been that this year. I need to get myself cleaned up a little and if we make some gains on the car we will be right there with being at the top.”
Source: Holly Cain | NASCAR Wire Service
