Five thoughts after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono Raceway…
1. Understanding the current situation
Ryan Blaney is not on pace to set career-highs in key statistical categories such as top-five or top-10 finishes in 2024. Blaney’s past seasons have shown more consistency in terms of average placements.
But this year, and even further back in time for the 2023 playoffs, Blaney has looked like a different driver: one with a shot at winning.
When Blaney earned his first career win at Pocono Raceway midway through his second full-time season in 2017, it looked like he would soon win many more trophies. He was a promising young talent with great potential and was expected to win several races each year.
However, he won just seven times in his first 7 1/2 years in the NASCAR Cup Series, and until last fall’s championship, it never seemed likely that Blaney would become more than one winner per year.
Perceptions have certainly changed: Blaney has won five times in the past 14 months and was on the verge of winning two more this season, including two after Pocono.
Blaney ran out of gas while leading on the final lap at Worldwide Technology Raceway near St. Louis in June, and when Daniel Suarez beat Blaney (and Kyle Busch) across the finish line in Atlanta in February, it resulted in one of the closest finishes in NASCAR history.
More importantly, it’s not uncommon to see Blaney leading the way and regularly competing for wins. Once in the shadow of more-established teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, Blaney is no longer just another driver on his own team. And with Keselowski moving to a still-developing organization, Logano’s relative lack of results since winning the 2022 championship (two wins in the past year and a half) and Kevin Harvick’s retirement, the 30-year-old Blaney has emerged as the leader not just for Team Penske, but for Ford as a whole.
“When you’re young and obsessed, you can get so caught up in the gas that you lose focus on the end goal,” Blaney says. “I’ve been trying to maintain that same speed for a while, but also trying to get into the mindset of, ‘That’s not everything.'”
“Anyone can run fast, but can you put the whole race together? … I’ve been training really hard to do that, to be that guy.”
2. Fastest Car Chase
The other cars have been doing well the last few weeks, winning three races in a row (Nashville, Chicago and Pocono). Blaney, who led the most laps on Sunday, also benefited from a great strategy call that got him some clean air and likely led the top three to five cars to victory.
“I knew early on that our car was good enough to win the race, it was just a matter of whether we could restart on the front two rows,” Blaney said.
Blaney led the “Fastest Laps Run” category in NASCAR’s loop data (Blanney recorded 22 of the fastest laps to Denny Hamlin’s 17), but Hamlin slightly won the overall green flag speed despite spending less time in clean air.
I’m going to say that the fastest car (Hamlin) didn’t win the race because I have a hunch that whoever was in the lead would probably be hard to pass at the end, although Blaney was by no means inferior.
Fastest Car Score: Other Cars 13, Fastest Cars 10.
Fastest cars by driver: Christopher Bell 5, Denny Hamlin 4, Kyle Larson 3, Tyler Reddick 2, William Byron 2, Joey Logano 2, Michael McDowell 1, Martin Truex Jr. 1, Todd Gilliland 1, Ty Gibbs 1, Shane Van Gisbergen 1.
Denny Hamlin may have had the fastest car on Sunday, but a great strategy from Ryan Blaney gave Blaney the win. (James Gilbert/Getty Images)
3. Question and Answer Session
Every week in this space we will pose one question from the past and try to answer one of them.
Q: What is NASCAR’s true “best of” race?
The Brickyard 400 returns this week after a three-year hiatus, but the question is whether the hiatus has diminished the prestige of the longtime major race.
From this corner, the answer is “definitely not.” If anything, the lack of a real NASCAR Indianapolis experience has only made me yearn for the race even more.
Take, for example, the Southern 500. NASCAR executives once foolishly thought it would be a good idea to move the historic Labor Day Weekend race from Darlington to Southern California. Sure, there was a race at Darlington, but running the Southern 500 in April just didn’t feel authentic.
Darlington returned to its traditional date in 2015 after a 12-year hiatus and has once again become one of the most cherished events on the schedule.
Many races at the Brickyard have been boring and drawn significantly less attendance, so you can see why NASCAR wanted to try the Indianapolis road course, especially in 2020 when this decision was made, when NASCAR road racing was all the rage.
Additionally, NASCAR did not believe the move would result in a significant reduction in the schedule. When a reporter asked in 2020 how the schedule would change with one fewer major race, NASCAR’s Steve O’Donnell disputed that premise.
“I don’t know why we’re taking away one of the jewels in the crown,” O’Donnell said at the time. “The Brickyard is going to be run on a road course. That’s the jewel in the crown.”
But NASCAR miscalculated by assuming that drivers, crews and fans would hold road courses in the same prestige as oval races. That didn’t happen, and there was no replacement race for the Brickyard on NASCAR’s prime schedule (though there was a suggestion that a Bristol Night Race would take that spot).
Thankfully, the Brickyard is back, and hopefully will remain, entertainment-wise or not. The race is too important to disappear, and has now reclaimed its place among the major races, alongside the Daytona 500, Southern 500 and Coca-Cola 600.
A: What is a “fair” race?
This was a topic that came up in this column after last year’s Pocono, where there was an incident between Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson that decided the race.
A year later, the debate over racing ethics has mostly died down, and in the current Next Gen environment, it’s common to have someone go very hard, with very little and very little yielding, whether that’s on a restart or trying to stop a faster car from passing you on a long run.
Blocking (by making hard turns or taking advantage of the air on the other driver’s line), pinning someone on the track, or forcing them into the wall now seem to be a more accepted part of the game, even if the drivers don’t particularly enjoy racing that way. In other words, most on-track aggression now does not seem to be a serious breach of the driver’s code of conduct.
Still, there are instances where fair racing has gone beyond the bounds of fair play — depending on who you ask. On Sunday, Corey LaJoie appeared to pass Kyle Busch for what appeared to be a second block, but replays didn’t seem to show what LaJoie said (i.e. that Busch did it himself).
But after the race, LaJoie told NASCAR.com’s Jesse Punch that he wasn’t planning on apologizing and wouldn’t have changed anything. So, as is typical in NASCAR, which mostly avoids “avoidable contact” situations, it will now be up to Busch and LaJoie to decide what they consider to be fair racing going forward.

This year, the NASCAR Cup Series made a much-welcomed move from the Brickyard road course to the oval. (Justin Casterline/Getty Images)
4. NASquirks
After years of racing in overbuilt venues that no longer reflected the level of fan interest, NASCAR seems to be in a much more balanced place these days. Thanks to the trend toward so-called “right-sizing” grandstands and the return of event travel after the pandemic, NASCAR tracks have sold out six of the 23 Cup Series races (including exhibitions) so far this season.
As a colleague in the industry pointed out, it can also be helpful to think of “rightsizing” in terms of schedules.
Pocono sold out two years in a row, something that seemed like a joke when the track hosted two 500-mile races six weeks apart, but now, with a capacity of roughly 50,000 fans, one 400-mile race per year, and great infield camping and fan zone experiences, Pocono has become the race to attend in the Northeast (Sunday traffic aside).
The Daytona 500 and the inaugural Iowa Speedway race weekend also sold out before the calendar even reached 2024, Phoenix Raceway sold out its March race (its sixth consecutive sellout overall), and Charlotte’s Coca-Cola 600 announced its third consecutive sellout on the Wednesday before the race. Nashville Superspeedway also sold out for the third time in four years.
These races come on the heels of a 50 percent increase in sold-out tickets from 2022 to 2023, with several other events slated for sell-outs again this season.
5. Five in 5th place
Mini power rankings after race number 23/38 (including exhibition):
1. Ryan Blaney (Last: 4): If Blaney doesn’t run out of gas at Gateway, he’ll suddenly have three wins in the last seven races. That kind of dominance on big tracks is hard to ignore.
2. Tyler Reddick (Last time: 5th): He has seven top 10 finishes in the last eight races and should have won two of the last three races.
3. Denny Hamlin (Last: 2): Hamlin has been struggling, but when it’s time to prove himself again on a big track, the No. 11 team has brought a fast car. Hamlin has never won at Indianapolis, but he should be the top favorite to win.
4. Kyle Larson (Last time: 3rd): The No. 5 team finished four consecutive races without leading a lap for the first time since July 2022. But speed remains the most important factor at this time of year.
5. Christopher Bell (Previously: 1st): Bell was oddly weak at Pocono, finishing 12th, after crashes at both Nashville and Chicago marred what could have been good results.

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(Top photo of Ryan Blaney celebrating Sunday’s win: James Gilbert/Getty Images)