Column By: REID SPENCER / NASCAR – AVONDALE, AZ – Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney smiled and acknowledged that having won a title in NASCAR’s premier series last year helped prepare him for his second shot this weekend.
Should the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford capture another title Sunday, he would be the first driver since Jimmie Johnson’s five-consecutive-championship run from 2006 through 2010 to win back-to-back titles. It would be the third consecutive for team owner Roger Penske, with teammate Joey Logano winning one in 2022.
“We have a chance to bring him (Penske) three in a row on the Cup side, and I’ve always thought internally to myself, ‘How do you make Roger proud?’” the 30-year-old Blaney explained.
“That’s my only goal in my racing life the last 12 years, how do I make Roger proud—because he’s given me my life really and bluntly—it’s to win races and win championships he hasn’t done before.
“And it’s a very small list of things he hasn’t done in motorsports, and we have a chance to do it for him. It’s just great to be in a position to do it for him, and we have two cars that can do it.
“He’s meant a ton to me, and it would mean the world just to keep bringing him things,” Blaney continued. “You can’t buy him anything, so you’ve got to win him championships and races, and that’s really all he cares about. It’s pretty amazing how dedicated he is to motorsports for how long he’s been in it.”
Blaney is coming off a walk-off victory, taking the trophy at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway last weekend, prevailing in a must-win, must-perform situation similar to what he will need to do this weekend at Phoenix to repeat.
A three-race winner this season with 11 top fives, Blaney is the No. 1 seed in this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race (3 p.m. ET Sunday on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
He is bolstered, he says, by having learned a lot from last year’s experience—his first time racing for a championship. He’s comfortable, smiling and insisting no lucky trinkets or superstitions necessary.
“Mentally, I think it’s been a little bit different because I have some experience being in the Championship 4—last year was my first time and I was just excited to be a part of the Champ 4 and going for a title and still am,” he said. “But I had a lot of unknowns last year. I didn’t know how the week would go. This year, you just have more experience, and you know what to expect.
“I’ve always said, experience is kind of king over everything,” he added. “You just get more comfortable in these positions when you have the reps in it.”
Years of Champ 4 experience have given Joey Logano sanguine perspective
At 34 years old, Joey Logano is competing in his 16th full-time season of NASCAR Cup Series racing, and on Sunday, he’ll try for his third series title in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
The driver of the No. 22 Team Penske Ford is the unrivaled veteran of Championship 4 events, having qualified for a record sixth this season. All his Championship 4 appearances have come in even-numbered years since NASCAR adopted the elimination format in 2014.
It was a relaxed, confident Logano who greeted reporters on NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 Media Day on Thursday at the one-mile flat track. That stood in sharp contrast to the driver who tried for his first title 10 years ago.
“It’s completely different,” said Logano, who shares the lead with Kyle Busch for most championships among full-time active drivers with two. “I remember my first time. How do you not get nervous the first time you sit in here, with all you guys talking.
“You’ve got the thoughts of what the championship would mean to your career, your team—and will you ever get another chance? It’s something you really want to click off and say you’re a NASCAR champion. All this stuff goes through your mind.
“That was something my first time that really… it got to me. I don’t see how it doesn’t, especially when you’re younger. Now you start to get comfortable in the scenario, you start to love the pressure and get excited more than nervous. That’s a big deal.”
A third title would put Logano in elite company, tied with Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and Tony Stewart—all NASCAR Hall of Famers. Only seven-time champions Richard Petty, Dale Earnhart Sr. and Jimmie Johnson and four-time champion Jeff Gordon have more.
Logano, however, isn’t concerned with his legacy just yet.
“When it comes to individually, I don’t think about it that much,” said Logano, who won the first of two straight titles for Team Penske in 2022. “I think of it more as a team, because I know what a championship is worth to everybody.
“So I think that matters more. The individual piece, to say you’ve got three of them, I mean that’s great, but I think because I’m still doing it, I don’t look at it that much. But I’d like to see the people that I care about on the race team celebrate.”
In order for the No. 22 team to celebrate, though, Logano will have to beat William Byron, Tyler Reddick and his own teammate, 2023 champion Ryan Blaney.
William Byron is ignoring ‘outside noise’ as title race approaches
William Byron stood anxiously next to his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet last Sunday on Martinsville (Va.) Speedway’s pit lane as NASCAR officials settled a points tiebreaker between Byron and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell—the winner receiving a ticket to the Championship Four, the other forced to wait until next year for a title opportunity.
Byron acknowledged the wait seemed like eternity, but this year’s Daytona 500 winner received the news that he “was in”—thanks to a Bell penalty—and maintains he instantaneously turned his thoughts to winning his first NASCAR Cup Series title as the lone Chevrolet driver among the four title contenders this weekend at Phoenix.
On the drive home from Martinsville to Charlotte, Byron shared that he put his cell phone away and arrived home “kind of excited… it was kind of relaxing.”
The 25-year-old Charlotte native and 2017 NASCAR Xfinity Series champion will benefit from his 14-time-championship Hendrick team being able to focus its massive resources and efforts on his iconic No. 24 Chevrolet.
Byron won at Phoenix in the spring of 2023 and has four top-five finishes through the opening nine races of this year’s Playoffs. He is one top-10 away from tying his personal best of 21 in 2023.
“I haven’t ever felt as bonded to my team as I am now,” said Byron, who finished a career-best third in the 2023 championship standings. “We had a meeting on Sunday night about it, and I feel like we turned the page really, really quickly.
“For me personally, I’ve blocked out a ton of the noise. I haven’t looked at social media. I don’t really care. I’m just trying to focus on getting the 24 car as fast as I can. I think past experiences have probably helped fuel that. I’ve been through enough BS in my Cup career that I know what to focus on and what to block out.
“I just want to do a great job for my team. I feel honestly Sunday night is a huge opportunity for us to go out and win the championship.”
Tyler Reddick is focused on the Championship Race in first attempt at Cup title
If the spring event at Phoenix Raceway is an indication, Tyler Reddick has cause for optimism entering Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at the one-mile track (3 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Five Toyota drivers combined to lead 298 of 312 laps in that race, with Reddick tying his 23XI Racing team owner, Denny Hamlin, with a race-high 68. Ultimately, Reddick finished 10th behind winner Christopher Bell, who led 50 circuits.
Before this season, Reddick finished third in the spring races of 2022 and 2023, but he says there’s a reason to take his more lackluster results in previous championship races with a grain of salt, given that this is his first time at Phoenix with a chance to win the Cup title.
“I feel like those other years, the season’s just getting rolling (in the spring), and you come here, you go with what you know, and I feel like I’ve ran well. We come back here for Championship Weekend when we haven’t been part of it, that’s our opportunity to try something, to learn something, to take risks with strategy, so it’s not always guaranteed to work out.
“Yeah, it’s been hit-or-miss from that aspect, but certainly when the car’s been very capable, I’ve been able to find ways to get a little bit of speed out of it or just get the speed that the car has out of it and have a potentially good weekend…
“It’s nice to know that when we really focus on this weekend and bring what we know is going to work good, we have speed.”
Reddick comes to Phoenix having qualified for the Championship by winning from the pole Oct. 27 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the same track where he locked up consecutive NASCAR Xfinity Series titles in 2018 and 2019.
Reddick is the only Toyota driver to win a Cup race since Bell triumphed at New Hampshire on June 23.
