1,000 Greatest Drivers: Ryan Blaney

He doesn't deserve two titles, but he'll likely defend his championship nonetheless.

I know most people will be focused on following the election returns, but I want to get this done as I promised since I already scheduled this post.

For a driver like Blaney who’s peaking right now, it seems like I’m going to have to keep editing this each year, but I probably won’t do it again until I’m closer to actually publishing the book. Blaney is a driver I admit I’ve struggled to understand and a lot of it is because he, Brad Keselowski, and Joey Logano all appear far lower in my model than you might expect. I definitely understand where this is coming from because Keselowski was badly outperformed by Kurt Busch his first year and a half at Penske and by the Hendrick drivers prior to that while Logano was badly outperformed by Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin at Joe Gibbs Racing. They also didn’t have many teammates other than each other in a lot of their peak years in the 2010s. Since Blaney still has losing records to both of them and they got blown out by their previous teammates, that results in my model acting like Blaney is only a barely above average driver, which is probably its biggest flaw in evaluating current drivers (well, either that or rating Tyler Reddick as a below-average driver). I suspect if I only counted each driver’s prime years (say, past the age of 25 or 30 or something) that all of them would be doing better as I’m not harshly judging Logano based on his JGR years, but I haven’t thought about how I’d implement any sort of age curve yet. Until then, the Penske drivers will remain underrated. Since I thought Chris Buescher was overrated in my model a couple years ago, I hoped that Keselowski would blow him out just so the Penske drivers’ ratings would be a little more accurate. When that didn’t happen and Buescher either matched or outperformed Keselowski depending on your perspective, I now just have to throw my hands up in the air.

I do think Blaney is going to successfully become the first driver since Jimmie Johnson to defend his title because Penske seems to be the only team that gives Phoenix the proper weight right now, much like Johnson’s #48 team was the first team to focus only on the playoff tracks and largely ignore the others. Since Blaney is conventionally faster than Logano, won the title last year, and honestly looked faster than him in the 2022 finale also, I’m pretty sure Blaney will outrun Logano and the other two. But just running better does not a championship ensure. I don’t think Blaney’s 2024 is as good as his 2023 because his cars are a lot better this year than they were last year and I’m not sure his performance is. While his speed advantage over Logano has never been greater, he dominated him much more in terms of on-track passing last year. I’m on the fence about whether to give Blaney an E or E- season. I feel like right now it’s E- but if he wins the title (as I do expect) I might elevate it to E. I also had his 2022 season rated E- originally (41st), but I have decided to mark that down to C+. I really don’t see much difference between any of Blaney’s seasons from 2017-2022, but he’s definitely stepped it up the last two years.