Not many saw Ryan Blaney winning the Cup Series title entering the playoffs, most analysts sticking with the JGR and Hendrick Motorsports heavyweights. Except for Dale Earnhardt Jr. The Hall of Famer picked the Team Penske driver to win the championship long before the playoffs even started. What makes it more impressive is the fact that he announced his pick when Ford was struggling for pace compared to Toyota and Chevrolet.
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On his podcast recently, Jr. expressed how in a way, it was the resurgence of RFK with driver/owner Brad Keselowski that sparked the upturn which led to the #12 driver capturing his first title.
Speaking on RFK’s domino effect on Ford as a manufacturer, Earnhardt said, “They’ve turned this company around. This company was at the very back of the pack, okay, and it didn’t look like there was any way up, any way forward.”
“I would credit Ryan Blaney’s Championship success to RFK’s ability to get this forward to move. Nobody could get the Ford to run, they did, and it really woke up the other Ford teams. Instead of sitting there saying ‘We’ll we have a car we can’t compete with, we got to wait till next year, this car you can’t make it work’, well RFK did, they figured it out and it actually motivated Pensky and the others to go to work,” concluded the two-time Daytona 500 winner.
RFK Racing saw incredible improvement toward the end of the season
The last five races of the regular season saw Chris Buescher take home three wins, eventually finishing 7th in the final standings. The #6 of Brad Keselowski also finished strongly, closing the season in 8th position.
What was rather more impressive was the fact that for most of the season, the Ford teams of Stewart-Haas Racing and Team Penske were struggling for pace. It was the impressive run of three victories by Buescher and a string of top 5s by Keselowski that gave life to the manufacturer’s season, culminating in Blaney’s title win.
The only question now is whether the team can carry that momentum into the 2024 season and mount a challenge for the title itself. The progress has been nothing short of remarkable for the legacy team, considering where the outfit was before Keselowski joined as an owner before the 2022 season.
