NASCAR star Ryan Blaney is back at Pocono Raceway

Ryan Blaney’s first victory in the NASCAR Cup Series came at Pocono Raceway in June 2017 when he was one of the fresh faces in the sport.

Eight years later, he comes back to Long Pond as not only the defending race winner but also one of the most established stars in NASCAR.

Blaney is obviously one to watch in Sunday’s Great American Getaway 400. He won the Cup series in 2023, finished second last year, and sits in seventh in the standings with a win and six top-5 finishes.

Now, he returns to the so-called Tricky Triangle, where he not only won in 2017 and last year, but also 11 top-12 finishes in 15 races.

“Pocono means a lot to me, being able to get my first Cup win there and winning there again seven years later,” the 31-year-old Blaney said. “I have a lot of friends and family in that area, and they love to come out to the race every single year. So, there are a lot of good things around Pocono, and I can’t wait to get back there.”

Does he have an edge at one of the most unique tracks in the sport?

“I hope so,” he said. “It’s always nice to go back to places that you’ve had success at. Things change from year to year and week to week, but when you have success at tracks you’ve won at pretty recently, you have a pretty decent notebook to use.

“You see where we were in terms of car setup and have a base of what we like,” Blaney added. “And then you learn things throughout the year, and you adjust a little bit. And as a driver, when you win at these places, you have a pretty good understanding of what you need the car to feel like and drive like to be successful. So all of those things add up and you just hope you’re able to utilize them when the weekend comes.”

Blaney said there was a definite difference between where he was at as a driver in 2017 when he was driving for the Wood Brothers Racing team and last year, when he was part of Team Penske.

“Both wins were very exciting, and you appreciate every single win,” he said. “But a lot happened in between that first win in 2017 and last year’s win. It was kind of cool. It was a full-circle moment, and it timed out really neat because it happened the year after we won the Cup title. My wife’s family is from just outside Philly, Conshohocken, so to be able to celebrate with them and have that moment in Victory Lane was really cool. It’s always neat to have family there, especially ones who really didn’t grow up going to the racetrack all the time.

“Last year’s win was definitely different than the first one, and I’ve been fortunate to see how far we’ve come from the first one.”

Blaney, who is from Hartford Township, Ohio, is mostly happy with the season he’s having and how the Cup series is progressing.

He is coming off a 14th-place finish in Mexico City, where the Cup series made its debut last week. He said it has been an “up and down year with some misfortune and more DNFs than I’d personally like to have.

“I’ve had some blown engines and have been getting caught up in some wrecks, and those kinds of things stink,” he added. “But at the end of the day, I feel like our team has been running really, really well. I look at it from the point of our speed being good. It’s also is our team operating how we should? Our we communicating the right way? Are we doing the best job we can on the weekends? And I feel like we’ve been doing that. So that part I’m really proud of, and it was nice to get our win in Nashville.”

Consistency has been at the cornerstone of Blaney’s rise to the upper echelon of the circuit and his ability to contend for a title every year.

“It has been nice the last two years to have a shot at the title in the last race,” he said. “Winning it in 2023 was great, and then we came up just short last year.  Even before that, getting into the round of eight multiple times and just missing out on the championship four was something to take pride in. It’s tough to do. It’s tough to go through that nine-race gauntlet to keep moving on and give yourself a chance.

“But I’ve been really proud to be with a group that is as consistent as we are, and that’s all you can do — try to be up there every year and try to compete. Hopefully, we can continue to do that.”

This weekend’s race is not on network television. It can only be seen on the Amazon Prime streaming service, and NASCAR continues to explore new platforms and ways to reach fans.

The same is true of the in-season tournament in the Cup series, a takeoff on what the NBA has been doing the last two years.

“I think Amazon Prime has done a great job and I have really enjoyed them coming on the scene,” Blaney said. “I applaud them for the job they have done in putting on these races and explaining these things in certain ways. The cast they have, whether it’s in the booth or on the pre- and post-race shows, has been really good.

“What’s nice with them is that there is no time window you have to fit. There’s no time limit. They have full rein of what they want to do and they can go long with the post-race show and talk to the winner and the other drivers. As a fan, I’d like to have the chance to watch the race afterwards, and with Amazon Prime, you can do that.”

As for the in-season tournament, which begins with the next race in Atlanta, Blaney said: “It’ll be fun and it’s for $1 million. That’s a big incentive. Hopefully, the fans will enjoy watching it, and it will give them something else to pay attention to. There will be a little race within the race. I don’t see anything negative about it. There’s nothing bad that can come of it.

“In our sport, it’s usually not one versus one. It’s always one versus 40, or how many cars are in the race. This gives us a chance over the five weeks of this tournament as we go from 32 to 16 to 8 to 4 to 2 to 1 to go head-to-head. And we’re going to be seeded just like the NCAA Tournament in March Madness. It should be fun.”