Ryan Blaney was “waiting for a yellow” on his way to Nashville win

Ryan Blaney will be joining Penske teammates Joey Logano and Austin Cindric in the NASCAR Cup playoffs after his impressive victory at Nashville, becoming the ninth driver to win his way into the post-season discussion. 

But during the final run of the race, Blaney was preparing himself for the worst-case scenario, and who could blame him after the season he’s endured. The 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion had five DNFs this year with several potential wins slipping through his fingers.

“I was waiting for a yellow,” said Blaney after his victory at Nashville. “I figured this was coming and we were going to have to defend a restart. But you just keep making laps. You just keep doing it. My spotter counts me down laps and everything like that, but yeah, as a driver and you’re leading the race, you’re always expecting something to happen, especially when you have a comfortable lead. But fortunately for us, that didn’t happen and didn’t have to fend off a restart or pit stop or anything like that where things can get wild like they normally do here when you have a bunch of late yellows.”

But instead, the final 101 laps of the race went completely green, which is a very different story from the previous year where there were a total of five overtime restarts in this race. 

All of Team Penske will be fighting for the crown

Blaney’s win also means that all three Penske cars will be in the playoffs for the second consecutive year. They are the first multi-car team to get every car to Victory Lane in 2025 with fellow ‘super teams’ Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports, with two of their four cars locked in via wins. You can also count the Wood Brothers No. 21 Ford (which won at Las Vegas) as an honorary Penske car due to the close relationship between the two organizations, so make it 4/4 for them.

“I’ve been really proud of Team Penske and the Wood Brothers speed this year so far through the first dozen races,” said Blaney of the achievement. “For the last couple years we’ve struggled a little bit kind of getting going before the summer months, and I think we’ve figured it out come the fall and things like that or late summer. But I thought we just fired off this year with tons of speed, and was really proud of their efforts over the winter for that and carrying over what we accomplished at the end of last year and bringing it bigger and better at the start of this year.

“So it’s great to have everybody with a win and everybody locked in there, and hopefully we can just continue to rack it up. It’s nice that we have all the speed and all the teams are working very well together right now. Between myself and the #22, #2, #21, we’re all really in sync right now, and that’s tough to get when all four teams are really communicating great and we’re all playing off each other. That’s a really great thing that we have going on at our race shop.”

It’s always good to have the odds in your favor, especially when Penske is trying to remain undefeated in the Next Gen era come November when the champion is crowned. They have won all three titles since this generation of car was first introduced in 2022 with Logano beating Trackhouse’s Ross Chastain in 2022, Blaney beating Hendrick’s Kyle Larson in 2023, and Logano besting Blaney in a Penske 1-2 just one year ago.