Let me preface this by saying I was happy to see Joey Logano win his third championship at Phoenix this past Sunday, in part because history was made and Logano become one of ten drivers to win three or more NASCAR Cup Championships. But it was also in part because Logano is my Mom’s favourite driver (because he’s always smiling!) and it was great to see her get excited when Joey won.
Still…it was hard not to feel for Ryan Blaney in the aftermath of the NASCAR Cup Series Championship race, better known as…wait…that was the name of the race “NASCAR Cup Series Championship”? I mean, I guess it fits but geez, it kinda harkens back to the original XFL (you know, the really bad football league because it was run by a “wrasslin’” promoter….not to be confused with the totally legitimate XFL that was run by the Rock?) when they called their championship game “The Big Game At the End!”
Anyways, in the words of the Rock “It doesn’t matter what you call the race” because Ryan Blaney had to be feeling it as he climbed out of his #12 Team Penske Ford. He had come close to catching the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Joey Logano, but as our friend Mean Gene says, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And so, Ryan Blaney’s streak of championships was halted at one – and it had to hurt.
Now, you might ask yourself, why would Blaney’s loss in Phoenix sting more than the other two members of the Championship 4, William Byron or Tyler Reddick, both of whom were looking for their first championship?
Two reasons.
First, neither Byron nor Reddick were really in contention to win the race – and thus the championship – in the closing laps the way Blaney was. Byron finished third, a little over five seconds back, and would have been in position to challenge for the title if there had been a caution in the last dozen or so laps, especially if the Penske duo of Logano and Blaney had been the cause of the caution. Reddick, the fourth of the four championship contenders for most of the day, did finish sixth but would have also needed a caution.
Blaney, on the other hand, had spent the last dozen laps slowly but surely chewing into Logano’s lead. There were times when he was within a tenth of a second and it seemed it was just a matter of time until the 12 passed the 22 and claimed the lead and the title. But then Logano seemed to gain new life – or Blaney’s car started to fade. Not by much but enough. Three tenths of a second to be exact.
It’s one thing to know you haven’t got the car to compete with the eventual winner and maybe Reddick or even Byron can find solace in that. It just wasn’t their day. But for Blaney, well…which corner could he had found one tenth of second here, another three. Obviously getting to Logano might have been one thing, passing him another. They are both teammates at Team Penske after all. The Captain wouldn’t have appreciated having to soothe hurt feelings instead of being able to celebrate a championship. Therefore, a bump and run was out of the question…probably.
Blaney must now find himself in the same position as Carl Edwards after the 2011 season. You may recall that as Tony Stewart crossed the finish line to win the Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, he was in a tie in playoff points with Carl Edwards, who ironically had finished second in the race. The tie – and the championship – went to Stewart who had more wins on the season.
I don’t know Carl Edwards personally, so I’ve never been able to ask him just how many nights he’d laid awake, not necessarily worrying about not winning Texas or Phoenix (in which he finished second) but about finishing ahead of Truex at Martinsville. That’s how minute the distance was between Carl winning a championship and leaving Homestead empty-handed. He gets around Martin Truex, Jr. and finished 8th instead of 9th at Martinsville and he’s announced as 2011 Cup Series Champion Carl Edwards. Something as small as one spot higher in any of the previous 35 races and Edwards wins the championship.
And that’s where Blaney finds himself, except that instead of a tiny fraction of improvement over the course of a season, it was three tenths of a second over the course of 15 laps. And much like you could say that all Edwards needed was for Tony Stewart to finish one spot lower over the course of the season, all Blaney needed was for Joey Logano to run 3/10ths slower.
You can’t tell me that won’t eat away at Blaney much like I’m sure it did to Edwards.
But, turning to the second reason this loss will sting at Blaney moreso than it will Byron or Reddick is that at least they won’t have to show up to their shop and have to face constant reminders that someone else won the 2024 Championship.
If Blaney had lost to Byron, even by such a slim margin as three-tenths of a second, when he went back to Team Penske’s shop, the men and women that the drivers always thank would have gathered around him and congratulated him on a great effort and told Blaney the other guy didn’t deserve the win as much as he did.
But at Penske, that “other guy” was one of their own: Joey Logano. While Blaney will certainly be congratulated on a great effort by everyone from Roger Penske on down and even Logano, he’ll also have to watch as his team celebrates someone else’s victory. He’ll see the images on social media, the banners at the shop, and all the marketing material for next season trumpeting Joey Logano as the reigning champion.
Honestly, it’s going to be like one of those rom-coms! You know, the one where the guy is best friends with the woman he’s totally in love with, but she’s marrying someone else. And he has to go to the wedding and smile and pretend to be happy but deep down he knows she should be with him.
That’s going to be Ryan Blaney.
johnmilner.ca 