{"id":28382,"date":"2019-11-01T15:30:51","date_gmt":"2019-11-01T20:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=28382"},"modified":"2019-11-01T17:07:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T22:07:24","slug":"ryan-blaney-readies-for-a-playoff-win-at-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/01\/ryan-blaney-readies-for-a-playoff-win-at-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Blaney readies for a Playoff win at Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Just this week, 25-year-old Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> driver Ryan Blaney<\/strong> took to social media to acknowledge and chide some media prognosticators, who may not have penciled him to still be Playoff-eligible and a win away from his Championship 4 debut.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ryan Blaney, driver of the #12 Wabash National Ford, looks on during practice for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on November 01, 2019 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

But he is. And more than that Blaney is liking the good vibes of his No. 12 Team Penske Ford\u2019s Playoff showing.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) is a venue where Blaney can feel especially optimistic.<\/p>\n

He won the 2018 Xfinity Series race from the pole position on the Fort Worth high banks, finished less than half a second off race-winner Kevin Harvick\u2019s bumper in the overtime 2018 Cup Series Playoff race there and placed sixth in the 2017 Cup Playoff race. He had a string of three top-10 finishes only interrupted in March when his car suffered a rare over-heating issue.<\/p>\n

Blaney is coming off a fifth-place finish at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway last weekend \u2013 his fourth top 10 in the opening seven Playoff races and second top 10 in three weeks, including a career-first victory at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/TMS2_MENCS_Blaney_110119.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

He\u2019s ranked sixth in the Playoff standings going into Texas, one point behind fifth-place Kevin Harvick and only 15 points behind his Team Penske shopmate Joey Logano in the all-important fourth place \u2013 ultimately the position determining which four drivers earn a championship shot at the season finale Nov. 17 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.<\/p>\n

Joe Gibbs Racing driver, 2017 Cup champion Martin Truex has already earned his shot at a second championship with a win at Martinsville last week. Truex\u2019s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin, a five-race winner, is ranked second in the standings and their JGR teammate Kyle Busch \u2013 a four-race winner and the regular season champion is third, seven points behind Hamlin.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur morale is really high,\u2019\u2019 Blaney said Friday afternoon at Texas. \u201cObviously we want to get two [Penske] cars into Homestead, me and the 22 (Logano). That is tough do but I think the best thing you can do is worry about your own group.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike I said, our group is on a pretty big high right now. Talladega is gone and in the past. We are really excited about these tracks coming up here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a strong showing at Martinsville and got a lot of stage points and finished decent there which kept us in the hunt. You go out and grab a bunch of stage points the next two races and finish good, if you don\u2019t win the race obviously, you keep yourself in the hunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese next two tracks, here and Phoenix, have been really good to us in the past and have been good to us this year. We are really looking forward to the rest of the way here and trying to keep chugging along.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Blaney\u2019s impressive Playoff run matches one of his best seasons with the legendary Penske championship team. His 10 top-5 efforts is a career best and his 16 top-10 finishes equals a career high, with three races remaining to top that mark.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s now won a race in each of the previous three seasons and this penultimate Round of 8 is the farthest he\u2019s ever advanced in the Playoffs.<\/p>\n

As to that, Blaney acknowledged the pressure is certainly more palpable. And to his credit, he has not just glided in under the radar, he won one of the challenging races of the year (at Talladega) to advance to this important round.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely gets intense,\u2019\u2019 Blaney said. \u201cYou saw emotions run high last week. \u2026 Any race, playoff or not, I don\u2019t really look at it any differently.  If you make each round or whatever. At the end of the day, you still have a shot at making it to Homestead.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to do like last week, go to the track and do your job as best you can and run as well as you can and stay out of trouble and win the race. I have always had the same mindset throughout the whole year. I think if you change your mindset coming into the playoffs it is a little different. Why aren\u2019t you in that mindset all year?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is kind of how we have always approached it and being aggressive when we can and approach the playoff races the same as any race.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Having said that, Blaney also acknowledged that there is an unspoken and unmistaken realization that everyone is upping their games now. And he is ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intensity is high and there are lot of great cars,\u2019\u2019 Blaney said. \u201cThere are seven other cars in this Round of 8 that are really great and there are only three spots left open to get in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could easily see a playoff guy winning this week,\u2019\u2019 he added. \u201cThe tension ratchets up just like any Playoff system in any sport. Everyone gets really emotional because you realize what you are going for and you have shot at it.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service Just this week, 25-year-old Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Blaney took to social media to acknowledge and chide some media prognosticators, who may not have penciled him to still be Playoff-eligible and a win away from his Championship 4 debut. But he is. And more than that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":28389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[11],"tags":[366,16,435,21],"class_list":["post-28382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-aaa-texas-500","tag-nascar","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-texas-motor-speedway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/TMS2_MENCS_Blaney_Garage_110119.jpg?fit=4153%2C2694","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-7nM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28382","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=28382"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28392,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28382\/revisions\/28392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}