CHARLOTTE, N.C. — At the conclusion of a stressful race at Daytona last weekend, which punctuated one of the more wild and stressful seasons in NASCAR Cup Series memory, Ryan Blaney said he needed a beer.
So did he get one?
“Yeah,” Blaney said with a chuckle. “Had a handful.”
For 16 drivers including Blaney, Sunday’s race at Darlington marks the first race of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. A “fresh start,” Blaney called it a few times during media day in Charlotte on Thursday. “A new life,” he said another time.
And no one needs that “reset” — another one — more than Blaney.
“I think it’s refreshing for everybody, not just me,” Blaney said of the dawn of the playoffs. “It’s refreshing for everybody on the teams. We’ve accomplished that goal of getting in, and now it turns into a new goal, of trying to win this weekend and trying to do our jobs for the next 10 weeks.”
The driver of the No. 12 car, by most metrics, had a solid season: eight top-five finishes, 12 top-10 finishes, three poles. He’s entering the playoffs ranked seventh in the field, in fact.
But in the 2022 season of parity that featured 16 different winners (15 of which are competing for a championship), Blaney never won — and that tossed his playoff spot up for grabs virtually every weekend, despite largely running well.
His main competition? Martin Truex Jr., who was also among the series’ leaders in points despite being winless.
The two competed every week, keeping an eye on each other. Their battle for points was astounding all year: At one point, after Michigan, Blaney boasted the second-most amount of points and Truex had the fourth-most and was barely above the 16-playoff-field cut-off, and Truex was on the outside-looking-in on the playoff picture.
“It was definitely a tough last month, racing the 19 real hard,” he said. “You got really just one guy you’re trying to (beat) to get into get the final spot, to set yourself up for 10 weeks. Alright, now that we’ve accomplished that goal, we have a little breath of fresh air.”
The points battle — and the stress — peaked last week at Daytona. Blaney was collected in a substantial wreck in Stage 1, and struggled to stay in the fight. He was down 14 on Truex with no way forward. It looked over. But then, after The (rain-induced) Big One late in Stage 3 that took out a lot of the field and thoroughly damaged Truex’s car, Blaney had a chance.
Blaney made up a lot of the laps he was behind on a large chunk of the field — and then when Truex fell from near the lead to eighth, the point differential swung in favor of Blaney.
And here he sits.
“You realize how fortunate you were,” Blaney said of Daytona. “Honestly, it was a lot of pride in, I had a lot of pride in my guys who worked their butts off on fixing that thing. Because it probably shouldn’t have been fixable to where it would drive.”
Considering the fact that the Team Penske Ford driver is the only driver competing for a championship without a win in the regular season — considering this is among Blaney’s best and most consistent seasons since his first Cup playoff run — does he have something to prove?
“I think everyone has something to prove,” he said. “You always want to prove that, you know, you can go and compete for a championship, and we have a chance to compete for a championship. It’s just a matter of how far you go.”
Blaney then shed a smile: “If we barely sneak in, by the skin of our teeth, and then go out there and make it to Phoenix, that would be pretty good. And I think this team is plenty capable.”
