After a dismal performance in Talladega that saw him get DNFed and maintain his third place in the standings, Ryan Blaney still has his eyes on Tyler Reddick in the lead. 

Blaney, who will start from 31st in his #12 Penske Ford, has a solid plan for the season ahead as he looks to close the gap to 23XI’s Tyler Reddick in an effort to win the Cup Series. 

Blaney spoke to the press in Texas ahead of the race and said, “Last two weeks. We’ve lost a lot of points to him. We kind of closed it up there after Bristol. I think we were within seventy or something, and in the last couple weeks haven’t been very good.”

After the #45 for 23XI won the first three races, it was Blaney who won in Phoenix to break Reddick’s hot streak, but since then, Reddick has picked up two more wins while Blaney’s strongest finish since then has been 2nd in Bristol when Ty Gibbs won for JGR. 

That race helped Blaney close the gap with Reddick, but right now Blaney is still 140 points behind him.

“He’s a long way out. The best thing we can do like how do we kind of race around the guys that we’re close to right now, the 11 and the 9, and a couple of other guys that are there.” Blaney added, “Hopefully we can run good rough to where we keep chipping back into Tyler’s lead.”

On what he and his team need to do for the races ahead, Blaney said, “It’s gonna be tough to get there, but points flow a lot. It can flow a lot in this deal, and especially if you can win and the guy around you doesn’t have a good day or something, it can really split the script. So we just gotta get back on.”

Blaney’s recent poor form

Blaney finished 2nd in Bristol after a tight fight to the end with Ty Gibbs in overtime, but since then, his races have been far from the standard he and Team Penske have set around the  #12 car. 

Blaney said, “Trying to get smoothed out a little bit. Last two weeks haven’t been the most fun.”

That’s because, since his 2nd in Bristol, Blaney has failed to pick up major points. He finished 24th in Kansas and only managed to pick up 13 points before his race in Talladega was even worse. 

In Talladega, Blaney was constantly at the bottom of the field, being classified 37th after not being able to finish the race. He picked up just 7 stage points, which has kept Blaney third in the Championship standings, with Denny Hamlin taking second place with a 30-point lead above him.

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Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason