Eleven races into the Cup season, Ryan Blaney seeks his first win of the year, although if things had gone his way he might have had multiple victories by now.
Last weekend’s race at Texas was another dose of frustration for the former Cup champion.
Blaney’s struggle to win also continues a trend seen throughout most of his Cup career. Only once has he won before the 13th race of the season.
With Joey Logano winning at Texas — and teammate Austin Cindric winning the week before at Talladega — Blaney is the only Team Penske driver without a Cup victory this season.
On a restart 23 laps from the scheduled end last weekend at Texas, Blaney was second and choose to restart on the inside line behind leader Kyle Larson. That gave Michael McDowell the outside of the front row.
McDowell passed Larson for the lead shortly before a caution came out. Blaney was second and got to restart on the outside but couldn’t secure the lead on either of the final two restarts while going against McDowell or Joey Logano.
“The one time I didn’t pick the outside (McDowell) got the lead and then I couldn’t get it back,” Blaney said after finishing third at Texas. “Just driver making dumb decisions and not doing his job. I appreciate the team. The 12 car was a fast car today. I just can’t do anything right currently. Hopefully it will work itself out.”
Blaney has often been left to talk this season about how fast a car he’s had and the hope that better finishes are ahead.
At Atlanta in the season’s second race, Blaney was running fourth with 32 laps to go when a push from Carson Hocevar spun him. Blaney came back to finish fourth. Hocevar apologized to Blaney after the race.
At Phoenix in the season’s fourth race, Blaney was running eighth with 23 laps to go when his engine blew.
At Las Vegas in the season’s fifth race, Blaney misunderstood his spotter and didn’t realize he had two cars to his outside when he made contact with a car and wrecked while running seventh on a restart with 72 laps to go.
At Homestead in the season’s sixth race, Blaney led a race-high 124 laps, won the opening stage and finished third in the second stage to score 18 stage points. He was running third with 60 laps to go when his engine blew.
“It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today,” he said that day. We’ll keep our heads up. It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for.”
A new week will send the series and Blaney to Kansas Speedway for Sunday’s race. It’s the track he made his Cup debut in 2014. He finished fourth there in last year’s playoff race. Sunday will be his 21st start at the track and his best finish was third in the 2017 playoff race.
