Ryan Blaney is very good at Phoenix.
He is very good at Talladega.
Gosh, honestly, he is really good at Martinsville too.
At the same time, Blaney is fifth in the Chase for the Championship and 85 points back but the next three weeks could certainly be the start of something special for the Penske No. 12 team by virtue of just doing what they normally do late in the season.
Win these races, which sounds like a lot of pressure, but not to Blaney.
“I take it as it’s a compliment that people are trying to chase US, so that means you’re doing something well,” Blaney said. “So, I don’t go into places where we’ve run well and are like, ‘Man, don’t mess this up. We always run good here. It’s gonna look bad if we don’t run good.’
“I just look at it as, ‘Hey, we have a great starting point. Let’s continue to build off of this and be confident in unloading.’ I think it’s better when people are chasing you and kind of watching your car through practice of what your car does really well. That’s flattering.”
Blaney was fastest in practice on Saturday and third fastest over 10 consecutive laps. He’s seeking his third consecutive win at the flat mile and has four other runner-ups and one other top-five at this track in the Next-Gen era.
On the other hand, points leader Kyle Larson says he ‘sucks’ at Phoenix so this is an opportunity race. He has a 2.8 average finish this year and Blaney doesn’t expect that to end this weekend, no matter what Larson said.
“No, I’m treating it as they’re not gonna have a mistake and we have to go win races to catch him,” Blaney said. “It could go either way. Everyone is like, ‘Oh, the law of averages, he’s gonna have a bad weekend,’ but they might not and if they don’t, then props, 100 percent. You did a heck of a job.
“You really whooped up on everybody, so that’s my mindset is they are not going to have a bad week and we have to capitalize on it if he fifths it out the rest of the way, we have to go win a couple at least to try to get there. That’s where our mindset is at. We’re not waiting on him to make a mistake. We want to capitalize on running well and winning races.”
That’s how he is viewing Talladega too. He’s just going to try to go win the race and get as many stage points as possible.
“I have just tried to approach these speedways as big opportunities and not trying to think about ‘this could be an awful day or not,’ just try to go control the race and lead laps and have a good day,” Blaney said. “I do think there’s a little bit of mindsets there that could be different.
“I always look at and I only say this because I’m a Buckeye and Ohio State did this with Texas earlier this year, they got up early and then they started to protecting that second half and Texas came back and won.
“You play different when you’re protecting, but I don’t think our mindset changes, at least from this 12 team of you’re always kind of on attack mode, whether you’re 85 points behind like we are or 85 points ahead. You always just go try to do the best job that you can and I think that’s the best way – just try not to defer from what you usually try to do in your job from each weekend.”
His crew chief, Jonathan Hassler isn’t shying away from the pressure of this moment, calling it a ‘must win’ race.
“It’s definitely getting down to that time,” Blaney said. “You’ve only got four left and the points that we’re out, I think you do kind of have to treat it as a must-win. It’s gonna be really hard if you only gain four or five or six points on him this weekend. You know that’s hard, so you need to try to take a big chunk with the 20 bonuses and then you hope you outpoint him in the stages too and just keep chipping away.
“So, I would kind of categorize this as a big championship moment weekend for our team of if we can win this weekend, I think we can hopefully keep chipping away at it. If we don’t win this weekend, the job is exponentially harder going into the next three weeks.”
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