Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Menards/Knauf Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is coming off his first victory of the season last week at Nashville Superspeedway. Blaney stopped by the infield media center at Michigan International Speedway this morning to talk about that win and his hopes for making it two straight this weekend.

RYAN BLANEY, No. 12 Menards/Knauf Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT DO YOU EXPECT THE ATMOSPHERE TO BE LIKE IN MEXICO NEXT WEEK? “I think the atmosphere is gonna be fantastic. Myself, Chase, Suarez and C Bell went down there a couple months ago and that was one of the biggest things I noticed about it was every single media member that was there at the press conference, all the fans walking around, they were very excited for us to come this summer, so that part of it I’m really looking forward to. They were very welcoming. You never really know what kind of welcome you’re gonna get when you go to a new place anywhere in general, so I think seeing their excitement really makes us feel good about the fact they’re excited for us to come down and put on a good show. I think it’s gonna be a great hit. I’m really excited to get there next week and it should be a fun one. It should be good.”

DO YOU THINK THE SIMULATOR HAS BEEN ACCURATE FOR THAT TRACK? “Yeah, I think it’s been pretty accurate. I was in it a couple weeks ago. I’ll go in it again this upcoming week and walking around it, when we went down there, they were tearing down stuff from a big music festival they did, but everyone showing us around the track and saying, ‘this is how we’re gonna kind of lay it out,’ and, honestly, they asked us about some wall placements and things like that. The four of us just talked it out and gave them some suggestions, but I feel like when I was in the sim it was pretty accurate to what they told me it’s gonna be, so that part is nice. You never fully know, but they just do the best job they can with the info they get and applying it to the sim, so I feel like it’s gonna be pretty accurate. We’ll find out when we get there, but I think it’s gonna be pretty close.”

HOW WILL THE COURSE RACE? “I think it will race really well, honestly. I think there’s a lot of passing zones obviously into turn one. Down the long frontstretch is gonna be one. Into turn four. There’s like a flowy esses section that I don’t know if you’ll see a lot of passing there, just as a normal ess carrying speed, but then there’s another braking zone into the stadium, that right-hander that I think you’re gonna see some moves, and then in the stadium there’s a really, really tight left-hander. It’s super tight and it requires a big arc to run it properly, but you’re gonna have guys kind of short cut it and dive in there, almost like the new Roval turn. It’s kind of set up like that with that angle to me, where you saw a lot of guys short it and send it in there, so there’s at least four and then we always find funky ones through there to try to catch people by surprise, so I think it’s gonna race very well. I like the track layout. I think they did a really good job on it. It has all different aspects from high-speed straightaways, really heavy braking zones, flowy sections, and then like your really slow stadium section. I think it has all pieces of road courses that we run are kind of mashed into one, so I think it looks like a great racetrack.”

IS IT DIFFERENT NOW PREPARING FOR TRACKS LIKE MICHIGAN AND POCONO SINCE YOU ONLY GO THERE ONCE A YEAR AS OPPOSED TO BEFORE? “For me, it’s business as usual preparing for every week. You might not have a race or two more that you kind of used to get a couple shots at Pocono and a couple shots here at Michigan, like you said, and now it’s one, so the data you get when we go to Pocono in a couple weeks is gonna be pretty important because you get one shot at everyone, but we take pieces from everywhere and apply them the best that we can. Do I wish we went to Pocono twice and Michigan twice? I could go either way. I like both of them a lot. I personally thought the doubleheader weekend we had one year at Pocono was really good. I really liked it. It was a little bit shorter race, but you get two Cup races and I think they filled it up with Xfinity and Trucks and possibly even ARCA that weekend, so you could see five races. That’s just part of it. You plan as best you can and you gather intel the best you can for when you go to places that are fairly similar.”

HOW HAS THE STRATEGY CHANGED FOR YOU GUYS AFTER THE WIN? “It’s really nothing different. We approach every week trying to win the race and no matter what spot you’re in, whether you’re not locked in on wins or you are. We did a great job last week of finally closing one out and you just try to do it again. A lot of people talk about that. Is there a mindset change when you win and you get locked in? I’ve never really believed that. I’ve always, to me at least and our group, it’s just we prepare every week like you’re trying to win the race, whether you’ve won one, zero or five it’s the same thing. And I don’t think you lay up anymore if you don’t have a win or you have a win or you don’t get more aggressive in these situations, unless it’s like down to maybe a couple races at the end and you have to win to get in – maybe you change some stuff up – but our group we’ve just always kind of tried to be as consistent as we can and try to do the best thing for our team and make the best decisions at the time no matter what spot you’re in.”

IS THERE ANY OTHER TRACK YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE NASCAR RACE ON? “I applaud NASCAR for getting bold and going to some places new, like trying the street course at Chicago, wanting to go international with Mexico. I was a big advocate for pushing like, ‘we’ve got to get international somewhere.’ Whether that was Mexico, Canada, wherever we could go. Where else would I like to see them go? I don’t know. They’ve proven that they can kind of do it anywhere if you put the resources and the time in it. You can make a street course. You can go to different road courses that are already existing. Maybe even some tracks that we used to go to that we don’t go to anymore like a Chicago – the Joliet racetrack. My name is in the bucket for that. I’d like to see that come back because I think it would be a great racetrack. It always was. They are God. They can choose where they go. They set the schedule. They can work with these cities and things like that to figure out where can we bring our show pretty much to a city near you. I think they can do it. I don’t know all of the technical insights. I’m sure it’s hell. I just go where they tell me to go and I race, but I’d love to personally, if we’re naming places, I’d love to see Joliet come back.”

IF YOU COULD STEAL A STAGE WIN AND GET THOSE PLAYOFF POINTS, ARE YOU FLEXIBILE ENOUGH TO DO THAT WITH YOUR SITUATION? “Yeah, it’s all situational. We’ve done that before in a spot that we’ve already won a race or not, and it kind of depends. We’ve always looked at it as, ‘OK, if you’re running 15th and it’s funky caution to where it’s gonna be a few laps to the end can you get the lead and can you get a stage point? You’re gonna start in the back, but I don’t know if we have a car to win, so let’s get all we can and get 10 points and get a playoff point.’ Or on the other side of that, if you think your car can win the race and you get one of those, maybe you just want to keep track position and cycle back to the lead after the caution. In the talks Jonathan and I have always had we talk extensively about the spot we’re in and do we think we can win the race or not, and that really weighs a big factor in it and your decision-making because sometimes you don’t want to get buried if you think you have the best car out there. Maybe you do flip the stage, but if you think the best you’re gonna do is 10th all day, ‘hey, maybe let’s grab all the points we can if that opportunity comes up.’ So, it’s a lot of situational things that he and I try to prepare for and make calls about in the moment.”

IS THERE A SENSE OF RELIEF AFTER WINNING LAST WEEK? “I think it was more of a weight off our shoulders just because we’ve been so good this year and feel like we just haven’t been able to get anything going our way. I feel like we’ve been in contention to win a few of them and a few of those that we thought we could be in contention to win we didn’t even finish, so I feel like that was a huge relief of like, ‘Man, we finally got over this hurdle of our cars are really good.’ It was nice to just finally put a whole night together. Nothing silly happened. It just played out normally and the fastest car won the race and we just happened to be that car, so I think just the ups and downs of the year that we had, it was definitely a huge sense of relief and my guys deserved it. I was happy for my guys because they didn’t change their attitude one bit through the down times of the year. They’ve just always prepared every single week like the people that they are and knowing that we can go win the race any week, so that was nice that it was like, ‘Alright, finally nothing happened.’ We did our job great. Nothing silly played out and we were able to bring it home, so that part was nice I think mainly for that reason – because of all the ups and downs that we’ve had throughout the year.”

IN YOUR MIND WHAT IS THE LINE BETWEEN AGGRESSIVE, CLEAN DRIVING AND RECKLESS DRIVING. AND DO YOU THINK THE ATTENTION HOCEVAR HAS BEEN GETTING IS GOOD FOR THE SPORT? “Everyone’s line is different. I can’t really speak for anybody else. My father raised me. He raced for a long time, so I had that going for me that he was able to teach me the do’s and don’ts. I’ve been chewed out a lot when I was younger for doing the wrong thing – at being overly aggressive and costing somebody else. My dad chewed my ass out when I did that. I did it a few times in late models when I was like 13 and he said it right. He set the line. He said, ‘This is wrong. You do not race this way. This is just how it is.’ It was one of those situations where I’m racing someone hard and I made a mistake. I slipped up and I spun him out. It wasn’t intentional, but even those mistakes dad would really make me clean up right away. That’s just how his dad raised him. I guess in my mind, hard racing is fantastic. Everyone races hard. Contact is going to happen. I think it’s an issue if it happens repetitively, like a lot. I think that’s when it starts becoming an issue. It’s like, ‘Do you learn from your mistakes?’ You can say you’re sorry all you want, but if you don’t learn from them and make a change, then everyone thinks you’re lying and you don’t feel sorry about that. Two guys are racing and they’re bumping and whatever, but, to me, over the line is if you get run over in the rear bumper and you get spun out and wrecked, then you have a brake pedal. You ran into that guy. I’ve read some stuff this week and people are like, ‘Well, Stenhouse could have cut him a break.’ I’m like, ‘How can Stenhouse cut him a break?’ I don’t understand. I think the 77 could have cut him a break if you’re gonna talk about breaks. I don’t even think that situation was cutting somebody a break. That was just getting run over, so, hey, he’s a young guy. All of us have been young. We’ve all been aggressive. Everyone has a heavy right foot when they get going and that’s good. I think he’s a very, very talented race car driver. He’s one of the best guys out there. It’s hard to teach speed. I think he just has to refine a little bit of what he does. I don’t think he has to change who he is because this is what got him here, but I think he’s got to possibly think of some situations that he’s been in and just try to learn from them. That’s really all you can do, so I don’t really critique anybody. I’m not critiquing him at all. That’s just my stance on it is when guys keep spinning off the front of your bumper that becomes an issue. I’m not a huge fan of that. I’ve been a part of it. I got turned at Atlanta getting run into from behind. It’s like, ‘How many times are you gonna keep doing this until you learn?’ So, we’ll see.”

THE IN-SEASON TOURNAMENT IS GOING TO START SOON. DO YOU THINK GUYS WILL PAY ATTENTION TO THAT ONCE IT STARTS AND COULD IT DEVELOP INTO SOMETHING MORE? “It could. It definitely could. I think it’s a unique thing to have in the middle of the year. It’s definitely gonna be something on people’s minds starting this week. The qualifiers are this week and it goes for three weeks, and then we get going. I think it’s in the back of people’s minds. I wasn’t sitting around this week like, ‘It’s in-season tournament time.’ You just try to run the best you can and then when I think you get into that five-week stretch of the tournament, you’re gonna be aware of who you’re racing like, ‘Who am I up against this week?’ You’re definitely gonna be aware of that because there is a lot of money and pride if you win the thing. It’s like a five-week All-Star Race, so you’re always gonna be thinking about that. You could go the easy route and say, ‘If I just win all five races, I’m gonna beat everybody and win the deal.’ I guess that’s a mindset you can have for sure, but you’re gonna have teams thinking about it in the back of their head. Are they gonna jeopardize their race because of that? No, I don’t think so, but it’s definitely something we’re gonna think about through those five weeks and honestly these next three of seeding yourself. It’s like the March Madness bracket. You want to do well to seed yourself against an easier opponent, but it could be big. It could grow. I think it’s a great idea. Why not try it? You’re still gonna have racing, it’s just gonna be a race within the race between all the guys.”

YOU COULD SEE UPSETS AND HAVE LOWER SEEDS GO THROUGH. “You have that all the time. The first one is in Atlanta, so you’re gonna see some upsets there. You could see some big upsets. They knew what they were doing. And then Chicago, so you could see some big upsets in the first couple. I think that makes for drama and it makes for that, so you could see the Cinderella March Madness moments. That’s what we all grew up watching and you’re gonna have it here.”

THE SCHEDULE IS PRETTY DIVERSE THE NEXT SIX WEEKS. DO YOU LIKE THE DIVERSITY? “Yeah, I like it. It’s part of the schedule. You look at every week and understand that you’ve got some things coming up. I think the road courses are gonna be big. It’s gonna tell you a huge tale of where you’re sitting and you better be ready because there’s a lot of them coming up from road courses and street courses and things like that. We’ve only had one road course to start the year. What have teams learned from COTA and how are they gonna be better at Mexico and Chicago and Sonoma? You have a big variation of them, so it’s a fun part of the schedule where you’re going to very different places each week, and I think teams really enjoy that – at least I enjoy it because it really switches it up and keeps it fresh. It can also be frustrating if you’re not very good at those places. You could have a stretch of some bad weeks. Hopefully, we’re not on that boat, but I like this part of the schedule. There’s a lot of different things going on this summer.”

Ford Performance PR