{"id":22145,"date":"2018-10-05T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T18:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=22145"},"modified":"2018-10-05T18:39:14","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T23:39:14","slug":"ryan-blaney-reflects-on-most-recent-win-and-gears-up-for-the-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/05\/ryan-blaney-reflects-on-most-recent-win-and-gears-up-for-the-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney reflects on most recent win and gears up for the next"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Ryan Blaney<\/strong> acknowledged with a slight smile Friday morning that perhaps some pundits don\u2019t consider his No. 12 Team Penske Ford team a shoe-in to advance beyond this second round of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup<\/a> playoffs.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Ryan Blaney, driver of the #12 Menards\/Pennzoil Ford, celebrates after winning the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Bank of America Roval 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway on September 30, 2018 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Then again, those may be the same people that weren\u2019t expecting the 24-year old to be one of only three race winners in the first round either. And he and his team are still feeling the good vibes from last Sunday\u2019s victory at the Charlotte ROVAL even as they change focus to this Sunday\u2019s Gander Mountain 400 at Dover International Raceway (2 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cJust because you win a race, and the circumstances that we won the race in we weren\u2019t the best race car that weekend, last week, but I don\u2019t really think it elevates us or hurts us winning that race as far as the outside kind of sees,\u2019\u2019 Blaney said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s more of a confidence-builder inside the 12-team and inside our whole group that really gets everyone fired up, and big momentum for our team.  I wouldn\u2019t say we\u2019re a championship favorite.  I\u2019d say we\u2019re in the hunt and honestly we\u2019ve been in the hunt all year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like we\u2019ve kind of been on the cusp of being right there where we need to be just finding that little bit more from the speed standpoint of the race car and myself, but I think we\u2019re close. <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Dover2_MENCS_Blaney_100518.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re a favorite, but I think we\u2019re getting close to where we need to be, which is nice to see the progress that we\u2019ve had throughout the year.  It\u2019s really been fun to be a part of and witness in person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blaney has always been a humble, low-key persona even as one of the most popular new generation Cup drivers. Most importantly – as his win Sunday demonstrates – he is a top-shelf talent and knows how to get it done when it matters most. He and Penske teammate Brad Keselowski (at Las Vegas) and regular season champion, Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Kyle Busch (Richmond, Va.) are the only drivers arriving at the always-tough Dover \u201cMonster Mile\u201d with a playoff victory in their pocket and plenty of positive momentum.<\/p>\n

Blaney\u2019s eighth place finish at Dover this spring ties his best work (also in Fall, 2016) at the track.<\/p>\n

On the season, he has finished in the top-10 in four of the last seven Cup races with a fifth place at the Vegas playoff opener plus the win on Sunday moving him to the eighth place in the playoff standings. He\u2019s only two points behind fifth place Clint Bowyer in a crowded and competitive top-eight as the second round begins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a pretty good run at this track earlier this year,\u2019\u2019 Blaney said of Dover. \u201cWe\u2019ve always run decent here, we haven\u2019t really led a lot of laps here, but we\u2019ve kind of been running in that fifth to eighth range here for the last year or so, and we did that in the first race here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we ran eighth or something, but I think it\u2019s just trying to be consistent throughout the whole race.  I think that\u2019s really important in these Playoffs and the reason why you want to be consistent is obviously the stage points and you want to be able to get stage points in every round or every stage, I should say, and finish the race where you should up towards the front of the field.  The same thing goes at Talladega.\u201d<\/p>\n

His positioning is solid going forward and Blaney says the team is genuinely \u2013 and understandably \u2013 invigorated with the victory at Charlotte. And with tough and varied venues in this round \u2013 from the Dover one-miler, to the Talladega Superspeedway restrictor plate toss-up next week and the Kansas 1.5-miler elimination race the next \u2013 any positive momentum can be a difference maker.<\/p>\n

Blaney has a pair of top-10s in eight Talladega starts and has been taken out in crashes two of the last three races there. He started on the outside pole position at Kansas earlier this year and led 54 laps before being caught up in a crash. But he has three top-fives at the track, including a third place in the playoff race there last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople focus on just not getting in the big one, and that\u2019s a big part of it, but you\u2019ve got to get stage points at that place,\u2019\u2019 Blaney said of Talladega. \u201cYou can\u2019t go to Talladega or these speedways and not get any stage points.  That\u2019s a killer to your day. We did that a couple times.  We didn\u2019t get any stage points at Richmond and we finished 19th and that was a brutal hit to the points that we were in in the first round, so you really can\u2019t have that and especially when you start moving on in the rounds and the championship field gets smaller and smaller.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to get stage points and finish well, so I think just being consistent is the biggest thing we have to do and obviously staying out of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

With so much on the line in this most crucial portion of the schedule, Blaney conceded a good celebration last Sunday with friends followed by Team Penske\u2019s traditional victory ceremony at the shop on Monday has certainly kept him and his team enthusiastic about their chances going forward in the trophy hunt. His exuberance is a fantastic reminder of what winning is all about. And it will surprise no one if Blaney wins more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to celebrate these wins, but then you\u2019re focused on the next week, so there has just been a couple more things to do and you see everybody in the shop,\u2019\u2019 Blaney shared with a smile. “They\u2019re really excited, so it\u2019s nice to see their faces, but you\u2019re focused immediately on the next round, the next race and trying to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Ryan Blaney acknowledged with a slight smile Friday morning that perhaps some pundits don\u2019t consider his No. 12 Team Penske Ford team a shoe-in to advance beyond this second round of Monster Energy NASCAR Cup playoffs. Then again, those may be the same people that weren\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":22146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,435],"class_list":["post-22145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-ryan-blaney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/358027.jpg?fit=4044%2C2658","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-5Lb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22150,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22145\/revisions\/22150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}