Ryan Blaney has been solid in the opening two races of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.
The Team Penske driver led 118 laps and finished seventh in the season-opening Daytona 500 and finished seventh. Last week at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Blaney came home 12th after starting in the 26th starting spot. Along with his teammates Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, Blaney is proud of how the entire Penske organization has kicked off the year.
“Atlanta is a great track for Brad and he showed it,” Blaney said Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in preparation for Sunday’s Pennzoil 400. “Joey ran well. Atlanta is probably up there with the places I struggle the most and we ran okay. I am really looking forward to this race this weekend. I feel like we have a decent idea for this place.
“Hopefully we can run well or get a win. That would be pretty nice to do that early in the season. The Fords have been really fast. That just shows the hard work they did in the off-season. We will get a better idea in the next few races here where we truly stack up.”
While Blaney wasn’t able to crack the top 10 last week in Atlanta, he was still pleased with how the No. 12 team ran in the season’s second race. The second year driver believes that bodes well for his run this week in Las Vegas.
“I thought we made decent gains there throughout the race,” he said. “Vegas is a place I look forward to going to. It is a great way to start off this west coast swing. It is somewhere we have always run pretty good. Hopefully we can have a good run.”
However, Blaney stresses not to take too much away from such a small sample size of performance around the entire series. He thinks the West Coast swing and a couple more races before the Easter weekend break will provide a better indication.
“I kind of categorize that as you take all six races before the break to realize — you come here and it is different than Atlanta,” Blaney explained. “You kind of show your strength here. Atlanta you can show strength but it is a different race track. You kind of see where your short track stuff adds up at Phoenix and then we go to a big two-mile and you really get an idea there.
“I think when the break comes and that off-weekend comes, you really know where you stack up and if you need to do a lot of work or if you have started off on the right foot. This place is really good to try to figure it out. I feel like you can get a good base of where you stack up.”
