Heading into Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Darlington Raceway, Steve Letarte does not have a great deal of faith in Ryan Blaney’s prospects.
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Sure, Blaney won two races during the regular season, including the regular season finale at Daytona last weekend, but there’s one thing that is really bothering Letarte.
“Seven DNFs this year. Seven! We’ve only run 26 races!” Letarte said incredulously on this week’s edition of NASCAR Inside The Race. “Man, they’ve had some stuff happen to them.”
But somehow, some way, Blaney still managed to finish the 26-race regular season second in the point standings before they were reset for the playoffs. And even with the reset, Blaney is still ranked fourth coming into Darlington.
Steve Letarte explained that his biggest worry with Blaney is how the playoffs work once the number of races per round shrinks. With just three races in each round, the margin for error is small.
While Blaney starts with a slight advantage, sitting 20 points above the cutline, Letarte stressed that one poorly timed DNF could completely change things.
If something goes wrong at Darlington, which would be surprising to him, Blaney could realistically find himself below the cutoff heading into Gateway and Bristol.
Letarte continued, “When the sample size is 26 weeks, he ended up second. Scored second most points of anybody. But in a sample size of three, it’s hard to recover from a DNF, whether it’s your doing or somebody else’s. This format rewards winning and excellence.”
This is the hardest part to predict. Co-host Alex Weaver added, “You cannot have a DNF week, especially in this opening round. Like, if you make a poor mistake, especially early in a race, yikes, good luck.”
But special guest Russell Wenrich of Racing Insights won’t lose faith in Blaney, even if he does get a DNF at Darlington. He said, “But he’s one of those that has the firepower to come back and win, too. Like he was leading and ran out of gas at Gateway with like three (laps) to go last year. Like, he’s great at Bristol.”
