TALLADEGA, Ala. — His championship hopes in danger after an early crash in the opening race of the third round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, Team Penske driver Ryan Blaney looked for some inspiration heading into a critical weekend at Talladega Superspeedway.
He found wisdom in the words of the late pro wrestler “Macho Man” Randy Savage, a WWE Hall of Famer.
“Unjustifiably in a position I’d rather not be in, but the cream will rise to the top,” Blaney said, quoting Savage about his title chances. “I don’t think there is a person before or after him that could cut promos quite like that guy. If I’m sitting at home and I’m bored — and maybe I’ve had a couple of drinks — I will go watch Randy Savage interviews just because I think it was amazing what was going through that man’s head.”
Blaney is last among the eight remaining title contenders and 31 points below the cutline with two races remaining to determine the four who will be racing for the championship in the season finale on Nov. 2 at Phoenix Raceway. One of those spots is already taken by Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin, who got the 60th Cup Series win of his career but his first at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last Sunday.
Blaney, the 2023 season champion, finished last at Las Vegas to land in this position. He’s joined in the bottom four by three-time Cup Series champ Joey Logano — combined, they have given Penske drivers a three-year run at the top — as well as Hendrick Motorsports drivers Chase Elliott and William Byron.
Blaney and Elliott, who won the 2020 season’s title, are the only two remaining playoff drivers who have won in the past nine Cup Series races at Talladega. Blaney, who is trying to reach the championship four for the third consecutive season, used his 2023 victory on the unpredictable Alabama track to lift him to the title.
While Blaney has three wins and six top-five finishes at Talladega, he also has failed to finish six of the 22 races he has run on the 2.66-mile track, including the past two. He was in a crash in the spring and finished 37th, and he was 39th in last year’s playoff race.
When he crashed last week at Las Vegas, it was the eighth time in 33 races Blaney has failed to finish this season. And, if he does win the Cup Series title, he would have the most unfinished races of any champion since the playoffs began in 2004.
He remains optimistic, though.
“I told myself, like, ‘Hey, you can be upset with the Vegas deal Sunday, but when you wake up Monday, we’re going to be full-on looking forward and heads-up looking forward to Talladega and then what challenges come at Martinsville,'” Blaney said, referring to the Virginia short track that hosts the last race before the final four are set. “I think it gets easier as you get older and your outlook on things change and you’re just trying to look ahead a little bit more.
“I think some of it come naturally and just natural growth, but the other is just having these conversations with myself years ago of, ‘Hey, I want to kind of change this up about me,’ because early in my career I would stew on things a little bit longer. Now I try to just drop things and move on from them, so it’s a little bit of both, but I think that’s the healthiest way I’ve been able to deal with it.”
Blaney at plus-1000 is the betting favorite.
Meanwhile, 2021 Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell continued to show his qualifying strength on superspeedways by winning the pole for Sunday’s race at Talladega in the Spire Motorsports No. 71 Chevrolet.
“The pole is awesome, but more important is just knowing you have a fast car for the race,” McDowell said.
McDowell grabbed the top position in the starting lineup at 182.466 mph for the eighth pole of his Cup Series career, which dates to 2008. He will be joined on the front row by playoff driver Chase Briscoe, who was second in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 19 Toyota.
Kyle Busch qualified third in a Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet, while Ford drivers Austin Cindric (Penske) and Ryan Preece (RFK Racing) filled out the top five.
JGR’s Christopher Bell and Blaney were the only other playoff drivers besides Briscoe to crack the top 10 at seventh and eighth, respectively, as more than half of the playoff drivers qualified outside the top 10: Byron was 13th, Logano 16th and Hamlin 17th. Hendrick’s Kyle Larson was 119th and Elliott 23rd.
Byron had one of the best cars at Las Vegas until he crashed out by slamming into the back of Ty Dillon’s Kaulig Racing Chevy at full speed. The Hendrick driver had no idea Dillon was trying to get to pit road.
The fallout put Byron out of the race and below the elimination cut line, and it cost Dillon’s spotter his job.
Joe White said he was fired by Kaulig for the poor communication on the spotter stand.
“Got to Talladega, parked the bus, got fired,” White posted on social media. “In an uber to the airport to go home for the weekend. Also to be clear, it was already determined that I would not be spotting for Ty next year, but that I would still be with Kaulig in some fashion. But not now.”
Dillon and Byron are in disagreement on whether Dillon’s intent to pit was ever relayed to Byron’s team, and White’s account doesn’t exactly add clarity.
“Here is the story of what happened last Sunday. I did in fact go down and tell the spotter of the 24 that we were pitting, and he misinterpreted the information. That’s what happened,” White wrote.
NASCAR has previously warned that it will be monitoring teams for potential cases of race manipulation, and Talladega is ripe for those situations because Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota drivers all tend to work together to manage the draft.
Cindric raised another point in that all eight playoff drivers have teammates who are not racing for the title but could be in position to offer an assist.
Hamlin is already in the final four, but JGR teammates Briscoe and Bell are not, while Ty Gibbs is not eligible. None of the three Hendrick drivers in the playoffs have clinched, but teammate Alex Bowman has already been eliminated. And at Penske, Blaney and Logano are trying to advance while Cindric, winner of the spring race at Talladega, was eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.
“I have to be an asset to those guys throughout the course of the next two weeks,” Cindric said. “I think the interesting thing when you look at the field and the playoff grid is that there are two cars from two teams which are both sitting below the cutline. So there’s a wingman for each of those, like (Bowman) is in the same position as me, (Gibbs) as well, and Hamlin is able to do the same thing for his teammates if he chooses to.
“Once you go down the list, it’s pretty even as far as the opportunity to help your company if the opportunity presents itself. This is the type of race track where that would happen more than anywhere else.”