Ryan Blaney hunts down second-season NASCAR in Firekeepers 400

Ryan Blaney is looking to use what his team learned in Nashville and Kansas to power him to his second win of the season.

• Ryan Blaney discusses his recent NASCAR Cup Series win at Nashville after a rocky start to the season.
• The Nashville win relieved pressure and confirmed Blaney’s ability to win, allowing the team to focus on future races.
• Blaney sees similarities between Michigan International Speedway and Kansas Speedway, hoping to build on a strong Kansas performance.

Ryan Blaney’s never had a start to a year quite like this one.

He’s had stretches without wins before, years where wins just haven’t happened. But starting a season with as many DNFs as top five finishes was something new.

“Just been a rocky, up and down year for us of having really good speed, and just having some misfortune,” Blaney told the Detroit Free Press this week’s entering this Sunday’s The Firekeepers Casino 400 at the Michigan International Speedway. “But we stayed just with our heads where they needed to be and focused on where we needed to get to. And the last of everything came full circle this past weekend.”

More than anything, the win in Nashville last Sunday served as a “weight off our shoulders,” Blaney said. His No. 12 Penske car was doing well otherwise as he was sitting at seventh overall in the standings even before the win, and he’s now virtually secured a spot in the playoffs.

The victory was a confirmation for Blaney that he could win, but didn’t alter much about the way he views himself or the car this year.

“I think it’s good for us to finally get one and just put that in your back pocket,” Blaney said. “Now, we can have people stop asking us about it. We can just go and fully focus on our task and just try to get more (wins).”

The Firekeepers Casino 400 at the Michigan International Speedway is a prime opportunity for Blaney and his team to do just that. The Speedway is an intermediate track, just like the one the team seized victory on last week in Nashville, but Blaney feels its true parallel is the Kansas Speedway, where he raced in the AdventHealth 400 back in May. He placed third in that race and felt it was one of the team’s best races of the season.

What Blaney likes about both the Kansas and the Michigan races is that both are high-speed races with plenty of full-throttle moments. The No. 12 has enough speed and versatility that Blaney rarely gets stuck in one lane in a race like that ­­— he can run the non-dominant lane of the race more than other drivers can.

“We compare Kansas and Michigan a lot through the years of just, how do you carry speed get in the corner? How does your car kind of take all the mid-corner speed when you’re not lifting much?” Blaney said.  “We take a lot of things to blend them into one, from last year’s Michigan race and then what we’ve learned in Kansas.

“Hopefully we can build off of the good run we had in Kansas and be even better at Michigan.”

Michigan also comes with a touch of added pressure for Blaney. He doesn’t consider it his “home race,” despite it being geographically one of the closest to his hometown of Hartford, Ohio; the Pocono race is more significant for him, as both he and his wife have family in the area. But Firekeepers is the hometown of Ford, his manufacturer, and he’d like to succeed in their home race — even if it isn’t his.

“I look forward to this big weekend for us and Ford, being right in their backyard,” Blaney said. “And we were able to win up here in ‘21 and would be nice to get back to victory lane.”

Blaney’s got his first win of the season, but that doesn’t mean much if he can’t clinch the playoffs. So, in this unconventional start of a season, he hopes Michigan can be the point where he straightens out on track.

Matthew Auchincloss is a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. Connect at mauchincloss@freepress.com.