NASCAR Pocono takeaways: Ryan Blaney’s continued improvement, NASCAR’s crown jewel races

Five thoughts after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono Raceway …

1. Taking Stock

Ryan Blaney is not on pace for career highs in important statistical categories like top-five or top-10 finishes in 2024. Previous seasons from Blaney have seen more consistency in terms of his average finish.

But this year — and dating back to midway through the 2023 playoffs — Blaney has seemed like a different driver. Namely, a winning one.

When Blaney earned his first career victory midway through his second full-time season and won at Pocono Raceway in 2017, it seemed many more trophies would follow quickly. He was a young prospect with loads of potential, and there were hopes he would win several races on an annual basis.

Except, through his first seven and a half years in the NASCAR Cup Series, he won just seven times. And until the championship run last fall, it didn’t seem convincing Blaney would be much more than a once-a-year type of winner.

The perception has certainly changed. Blaney has now won five times in the last 14 months, including twice this season after Pocono — but he also was thisclose to having two more.

Blaney ran out of gas while leading on the last lap at World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis in June and barely lost one of the closest finishes in NASCAR history when Daniel Suárez edged him (and Kyle Busch) at the Atlanta finish line in February.

More importantly, seeing Blaney run up front and be in contention regularly for victories isn’t an unusual sight. Once firmly in the shadow of more established teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, Blaney is no longer just another driver on his own team. And with Keselowski’s departure to a still-building organization and Logano’s relative lack of results since winning the 2022 championship (two victories in the last season and a half) — along with Kevin Harvick’s retirement — the 30-year-old Blaney has emerged as a leader for not just Team Penske, but all of Ford.

“When you’re young and you’re getting into it, all you care about is pushing the gas pedal down and you lose focus on the end goal,” Blaney said. “I’ve tried to keep the same speed I’ve had for awhile, but also try to mold your mind into ‘That’s not everything that matters.’

“Anyone can be fast. But can you put a whole race together? … I’ve really worked hard on trying to do that, trying to become that guy.”

2. Fastest Car Tracker

Other Cars have gone on a heater in recent weeks, winning three straight races (Nashville, Chicago, Pocono). While Blaney led the most laps on Sunday, he was also the beneficiary of a great strategy call that gave him clean air and helped turn perhaps a top-three-to-five car into a win.

“We found out early that I thought our car was good enough to win the race, it was a matter of getting to be able to restart on the front two rows,” Blaney said.

Blaney led the “Fastest Laps Run” category in NASCAR’s Loop Data (he had 22 of the fastest laps while Denny Hamlin had 17), but Hamlin had a slightly faster overall green-flag speed despite spending less time in clean air.

The hunch is whoever had the lead was probably going to be tough to pass at the end, so we’ll say the fastest car (Hamlin) did not win the race — though Blaney was certainly no slouch.

Fastest Car Score: Other Cars 13, Fastest Cars 10.

Fastest Cars by Driver: Christopher Bell 5, Denny Hamlin 4, Kyle Larson 3, Tyler Reddick 2, William Byron 2, Joey Logano 2, Michael McDowell 1, Martin Truex Jr. 1, Todd Gilliland 1, Ty Gibbs 1, Shane van Gisbergen 1.

3. Q&A

Each week in this space, we’ll pose one question and attempt to answer one from the past.

Q: What are NASCAR’s true “crown jewel” races?

The Brickyard 400 returns this week after a three-year hiatus, and it’s worth wondering whether the break has weakened the prestige of the longtime major.

From this corner, the answer is: Absolutely not. If anything, the absence of the true NASCAR Indianapolis experience has made racing hearts grow fonder.

Just look at the Southern 500, for example. NASCAR executives once foolishly thought taking the historic Labor Day Weekend race away from Darlington and moving it to Southern California was a good idea. Darlington still had a race, of course, but holding the Southern 500 in April didn’t feel like the real thing.

Once Darlington got its traditional date restored in 2015, following a 12-year break, it has again become one of the schedule’s most cherished events.

So many editions of the Brickyard were so boring, and the attendance dipped so much, that you can see why NASCAR wanted to try the Indianapolis road course. Especially in 2020, when the decision was made, NASCAR road racing was all the rage.

Additionally, NASCAR did not view the move as taking a major off of the schedule. When a reporter asked in 2020 how the schedule would be reshaped with one less crown-jewel race, NASCAR’s Steve O’Donnell objected to the premise.

“I don’t know how it’s one less crown jewel,” O’Donnell said then. “The Brickyard, we’re going to be running the road course. It’s a crown jewel.”

But NASCAR’s miscalculation was that drivers, crew members and fans alike would hold the road course in any sort of the same prestige as a race on the oval. They did not, and there was also no replacement for the Brickyard on NASCAR’s crown schedule (despite some suggestions the Bristol Night Race would move into that slot).

Thankfully, the Brickyard is back — and hopefully here to stay, regardless of the entertainment value. It’s simply too important of a race to disappear, and it now retakes its place among the majors with the Daytona 500, Southern 500 and Coca-Cola 600.

A: What is “fair” racing?

This was a topic posed in this column after Pocono last year, which saw the Denny Hamlin-Kyle Larson incident that decided the race.

In the year since, the debate over racing ethics has mostly diminished. Running someone extremely hard is a given in the current Next Gen climate, with very little give and mostly take — whether that’s on restarts or even trying to prevent a faster car from making a pass during a long run.

Blocking (whether with forceful swerves or by using the air in someone’s line), pinching someone down the track, running them out of room up against the wall — it’s seemingly a more accepted part of the game now, even if the drivers don’t particularly enjoy racing that way. In other words, most of the aggression on the track now doesn’t seem to be an egregious breach of the driver code.

Still, some instances go beyond fair racing — depending on who you ask. Corey LaJoie appeared to dump Kyle Busch for what he deemed a second block on Sunday, though replays didn’t seem to show what LaJoie described (that Busch did it to himself, essentially).

But LaJoie told NASCAR.com’s Jessie Punch after the race he had no plans to apologize and wouldn’t have done anything differently. So as is typically the case in NASCAR, which almost always stays out of “avoidable contact” situations, it will be up to Busch and LaJoie what they deem to be fair racing going forward.

This year, the NASCAR Cup Series moves off the road course at the Brickyard and back to the oval in a largely welcomed move. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

4. NASquirks

After years of racing in over-built venues that no longer reflected the current level of fan interest, NASCAR seems to be in much more of a balance these days. The so-called trend of “right-sizing” grandstands, along with post-pandemic resurgence in event travel, has helped NASCAR tracks reach six sellouts in 23 Cup Series races (including exhibitions) so far this season.

As an industry colleague noted, it also helps to view “right-sizing” in terms of the schedule.

Pocono sold out for the second straight season, which once seemed laughable when the track had a pair of 500-mile races six weeks apart. But now, with room for approximately 50,000 fans and only one 400-mile race per year — along with an impressive infield camping and fan-zone experience — Pocono has become a desirable race to attend in the Northeast (Sunday’s traffic woes aside).

The Daytona 500 and the inaugural Iowa Speedway weekend also sold out before the calendar even turned to 2024, Phoenix Raceway sold out its March race (the sixth straight sellout overall there) and Charlotte’s Coca-Cola 600 announced a third consecutive sellout the Wednesday before its race. Nashville Superspeedway also sold out for a third time in four years.

Those races come on the heels of a 50 percent increase in sellouts from 2022 to 2023, with some likely-to-be-sold-out events still to come this season.

5. Five at No. 5

Our mini power rankings after Race No. 23/38 (including exhibitions):

1. Ryan Blaney (last time: 4): If Blaney doesn’t run out of gas at Gateway, he suddenly has three wins in the last seven races. This show of strength on a big track can’t be ignored.

2. Tyler Reddick (last time: 5): He now has seven top-10s in the last eight races and should have won two of the last three.

3. Denny Hamlin (last time: 2): It’s been quite a slump for Hamlin, but when it was time to deliver on a big track again, the No. 11 team brought a fast car. Hamlin should be the favorite heading into Indianapolis, which he has never won.

4. Kyle Larson (last time: 3): The No. 5 team has now gone four straight races without leading a lap for the first time since July 2022. But the speed is still there, which is the most important factor at this time of year.

5. Christopher Bell (last time: 1): Bell was oddly a non-factor at Pocono and finished 12th — this after crashes at both Nashville and Chicago spoiled what otherwise would have been good results.

GO DEEPER

NASCAR built an electric vehicle — but will it ever be raced?

(Top photo of Ryan Blaney celebrating Sunday’s win: James Gilbert / Getty Images)