Why NASCAR champion Ryan Blaney’s win at Charlotte was a pivotal moment in title run

Ryan Blaney teared up as he ran his final lap at Phoenix Raceway.

He didn’t win Sunday’s race, but he secured NASCAR’s most consequential second-place finish in the past 10 years.

This year’s Cup Series champion ascended to the top of the NASCAR summit this postseason, but before Blaney was the title winner, before he finished in the top six in five of his final six races, he was yet another driver with a resume ranging from strong Top 10 performances to suffering multiple bouts bad luck and poor execution.

Blaney was always fast, but he couldn’t find consistency. He reached the Round of 8 in last year’s playoffs — while in the midst of a 59-race winless streak.

The tide started turning on May 30 in Concord. After snapping that skid by winning the Coca-Cola 600, Blaney spoke about his confidence level, and said he’d questioned whether he’d win another race.

“Winning the 600 was huge for our organization for multiple reasons,” Blaney told reporters Sunday inside the media center. “It was big for me, getting out of that slump after not winning for a little bit. It was definitely good.”

The 29-year-old Team Penske driver — who comes from a racing family with his father, Dave, and grandfather, Lou — was the only playoff driver without a win during last year’s Round of 8 run. He kept himself among the fastest cars, but could never seize a checkered flag.

He’d faced some bad luck — like last October at Talladega, when Chase Elliott made a move to bolt past him with two laps left.

There were instances of poor execution, like when he incurred speeding penalties on pit road.

Prior to Charlotte, he’d collected eight Top 10 finishes, but faced some misfortune, like when Bubba Wallace blocked him from grabbing the lead late in April, also at Talladega.

“We have a list that you can put on the wall with things that lost us races last year,” team owner Roger Penske said. “It’s just progression. And look, we’re not gonna stop, because the car doesn’t get fixed by sitting in the garage. The driver gets better. The crew got better. And the outcome is what we see here today — they are champions.”

Before reversing his struggles at Alabama’s famed superspeedway with a win about a month ago, Blaney had gone 15 consecutive races without a finish better than ninth.

He still reached the playoffs, entering this fall’s postseason as the No. 12 seed of 16 drivers. He opened his championship run taking ninth at Darlington, and then couldn’t crack the Top 10 for the next three races.

Twelfth place was Blaney’s lowest finish since conquering Talladega. He took sixth at Las Vegas and second at Homestead before winning his way to the Championship 4 at Martinsville.

“The big shot in the arm was winning Talladega in the playoffs,” Blaney said. “Our team, we struggled through the summer months after the 600. We worked really hard to get better and better. Our team was, like, teetering on needing a little something good to happen.”

And once something good happened, Blaney went on a run, accomplishing what he’d dreamed of since he was a kid.