In 12 years at the Cup level, Ryan Blaney has collected 15 wins and, most importantly, the 2023 championship. His breakthrough didn’t come during his stint in Wood Brothers Racing’s No. 21. But since moving to Team Penske in 2018, he has scored 14 victories. And his long-term aim is to leave a mark like Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart, the legends who inspired his path.
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Ahead of the Round of 16 cutoff race at Bristol, Blaney was asked whether he and his peers have now become the backbone of today’s NASCAR. He replied, “I don’t necessarily think I contemplate that too much, but it is funny how you see crops come in like those guys you talked about, Jeff and Tony and Matt and all those guys.
“They were all like the same age and crops of guys coming in, and then after them it was Brad and Kyle and Joey. There wasn’t a ton of them, and then when me and Chase and Bubba and Larson and Byron and Bell it was like, boom, this whole crop of guys within a couple years of each other, so it’s weird how all of that stuff comes and goes.“
Blaney continued, “You never know. Hopefully, 10 years down the road, if I’m still around, you’ve got somebody who feels that way about me like I felt about Jeff and Tony and that stuff. That’s the special part to me.”
He explained that it’s about how drivers inspire kids, whether through the way they handle the wheel or the way they carry themselves off the track, making them larger than life, and he intends to do that for younger generations just as the previous NASCAR drivers did.
The No. 12 Team Penske driver admitted he idolized Gordon and Stewart, remembering how surreal it felt standing on the driver intro stage, thinking, “These guys are unbelievable.”
Blaney laughed at how old it must have made them feel when he came along, adding that he expects the same when he hits 40. To him, that cycle is part of the sport’s charm.
Beyond that, he said, racing is all he focuses on. He doesn’t think about a Hall of Fame nod down the line. In Blaney’s words, “If it happens, it happens.” He knows the road ahead is long, so he’ll take it as it comes.
What he does hope, though, is to become the kind of figure future racers look up to, just as he once did with the icons who came before him.
