NASCAR Cup Series Champion Ryan Blaney In A ‘Must Win’ At Martinsville

If Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney is going to win a second-straight NASCAR Cup Series Championship in 2024, he needs to win Sunday’s Xfinity 500 at Martinsville Speedway.

It’s a similar position to last year when Blaney won this race to assure him a spot in the NASCAR Championship 4 at Phoenix International Raceway.

As the final lap began in the October 27 race at Homestead, Blaney was literally in the driver’s seat to advance into the Championship 4 of NASCAR’s 2024 Playoffs.

The leader at the white flag, Blaney had Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota on the rear bumper of Blaney’s No. 12 Ford Mustang.

As Blaney charged into Turn 1, Tyler Reddick’s No. 45 Toyota was third and dove to the inside of Hamlin for second place. Reddick tucked behind Blaney down the backstretch before taking the high line in Turn 3.

He rode that line to victory and Blaney’s emotions bottomed out.

He arrived at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday, 38 points below the cutline to advance into next Sunday’s NASCAR Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway.

That puts Blaney in a classic, “Must Win” scenario in Sunday’s Xfinity 500, the final elimination race in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs that will trim the field from eight to four.

The pressure on Blaney is felt throughout his entire crew at Team Penske.

“The guys saw us take the white and they worked hard all week and all year to try to get into the championship race,” crew chief Jonathan Hassler said. “And they thought it was about to happen.

“But obviously, it didn’t work out.

“I think there’s a lot of expectation the guys would maybe be down and disappointed and disappointed in Ryan. But they all realize that Ryan is a big part of obviously what we’ve made it as far as we can. For him to make, maybe a little bit of a mistake is normal and human and we’re all human and we’re all going to continue to fight until the end.”

Blaney has tried to put last Sunday’s result out of his mind. He must focus on what he does well at Martinsville to have a chance.

He knows he can win – he did it last year to advance to the Championship 4 and ended up winning the championship.

What he needs most is a clear head and a focus on what needs to be done over the course of a 500-lap, short track battle on the flat, half-mile, paper-clip shaped Martinsville Speedway.

Homestead is over, it’s just a bitter memory.

“I worried about it enough Sunday night and Monday morning,” Blaney said. “I rewatched it when I got home Sunday night. I rewatched the whole race and rewatched the end of it and lost some sleep over the end of that race.

“It’s so easy to go back and watch it from the broadcast or re-live it in your head of, ‘Gosh, if I would have just done this different it would have been a different outcome.’ That’s easy to do, but in the moment it’s really hard to make the right decision.

“You’re making decisions every lap. You’re making a lot of decisions every lap and I look back on that and I talk about in some scenarios. Whether it’s speedways or end of these races things, whether you’re leading or second or whatever you’re guessing in some situations on what lane is going to be better, where the car in front of you is going to go, where the car behind you is going to go.

“You’re guessing and sometimes you guess right and sometimes you guess wrong.

“In that scenario, I guessed wrong on where he was going to go.”

Of course, Blaney wishes he could have done it differently and will learn from the experience. He doesn’t believe he took the right approach in Turns 1 and 2 and didn’t get to the right lane in Turns 3 and 4.

“I just guessed wrong of what he (Reddick) was going to do, and he did a great job of going where I wasn’t and carried just a ton of entry speed to get there and it stuck for him,” Blaney recalled. “I didn’t stew on it for too long.

“I feel like, ‘OK, here are some scenarios maybe you’ll be in in the future and let’s try to change it up,’ but I try not to lose my mind over that stuff. Even though it’s hard and it’s difficult to accept losing a race like that on the last corner, but you just try to put that in the memory bank of if you’re in that scenario again maybe do something different.”

Back at the team’s race shop in Mooresville, North Carolina, Hassler described the process of moving past Homestead and onto a must-win at Martinsville.

“We try to spend a good chunk of Monday reviewing the previous race, regardless of what time of year it is, just to continue to improve weekend and week out,” Hassler explained. “So, we did that this week, just like any other week, made a list of things that we could do better.

“We got to Monday afternoon, Tuesday morning, we were, focused on Martinsville.

“We know that we’re capable of winning. We know we were able to come to this race last year with our backs to the wall and get a win, so everybody’s confident.

“Everybody just knows that they have to do their part, and we’ll have a chance.”

Martinsville Speedway is as close to a home track for Blaney as there is on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule.

The son of former NASCAR driver Dale Blaney, the family home was in High Point, North Carolina, about a 45-minute drive from Martinsville Speedway.

As a youngster, Blaney remembers the track was incredibly neat and it helped him relate to the Legends cars and Bandoleros that he was driving at Charlotte Motor Speedway at the very beginning of his career.

“I just loved how the cars were so close together and you could see everything as a kid,” Blaney recalled. “We’d go sit in the stands and you could watch the whole racetrack and there was always something going on no matter where you looked, and I liked that as a kid. I enjoyed the noise of it as a kid and the smells that were right there.”

As he got older, he watched his father race from the pit stall inside the race track and that gave him a better understanding of what made a car successful in the race.

“I just loved how small the track was, and you could see every little bit of the racetrack and you could walk around in the infield and go to different parts of the track and see whatever you wanted to see, and it was just a close place,” Blaney said. “I honestly named that as my home track because I honestly grew up closer to Martinsville than I did to Charlotte from High Point, so it’s just one of those things that just grabs you as a kid and you have these core memories when you were growing up.”

When he drove to victory at Martinsville last year to advance to Phoenix, it was Blaney’s first NASCAR Cup Series victory at his home track of Martinsville. It also put him in position the following week to win his first NASCAR Cup Series Championship at Phoenix.

The same opportunity exists in 2024, but unlike 2023, Blaney can’t use points as a cushion in case he doesn’t win the race.

“For us, being a must win scenario, we’re definitely just focused on surviving,” Hassler said. “We can probably take some steps back early in the race if that puts us in a position, you know, late in the race to be up front.

“You definitely have to make it to the at the end to have a chance at winning.”

Phoenix can wait because Martinsville is on Blaney’s mind as his sole focus.

“I’m just focused on Martinsville,” Blaney said. “We’ll figure out Phoenix if it happens for us, but 100 percent of the focus is Martinsville and how do we perform on Sunday to try to win the race and get there.

“Then we’ll deal with Phoenix after that.

“I haven’t put any thought into Phoenix because the next task is Martinsville.”