Ryan Blaney Not Bothered by Less Than Ideal Start to NASCAR Title Defense

Defending Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney will be racing on one of his stronger tracks on Sunday. He won at the Talladega Superspeedway last October to help his Championship 4 campaign and will hope to point his way to victory lane.  Nine races into the ongoing season, he is yet to win a race. However, he isn’t overtly worried about the state of things at his #12 Team Penske camp.

Blaney was asked for a self-assessment of his season so far during his press conference in Talladega when he noted that he was having a better season than last year.

“Honestly, I feel like we’ve had the first quarter of this season go better than last year at this time. Fairly decent runs,” he said. “I thought I could have won last week. I had the speed to do it but I feel like before that we did a good job of stringing together a handful of top fives.”

The champion has 4 top fives in the first 9 races and a best finish of runner-up in Atlanta. He continued to note that the work that his team has been doing to improve on intermediates had pleased him and that they were in the right direction. He concluded, “Obviously, trying to get things a little bit better. But I’m happy with the progress we’ve made. Hopefully, we can continue to make that progress.”

Can Ryan Blaney capture the victory flag in Talladega?

Blaney has finished first or second in each of his last three races at Dega and is a strong favorite to keep the streak active after Sunday. He has also led 283 laps on the track – fourth highest among active drivers. He is one of the hottest picks on the betting slates with opening odds of 10-1 (Draftkings Sportsbook).

Despite that, Blaney will be at a significant disadvantage during the race. Crew chief Jonathan Hassler will not be at the track owing to the birth of his daughter.  Team engineer Tony Palmer and competition director Travis Geisler will take his place in the pit box.

However, Hassler will still be connected to the box remotely. “He was involved in everything [leading into Talladega] and he’s calling in for the race,” Blaney said. “He’ll be in those guys’ ears, but he was involved in prep like normal. He’s just not here.”

The superspeedway race in Talladega is set to begin at 3:00 p.m. ET.