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| It's a good time for Blaney to win this week. |
The first thing we have to understand is that this the 29th race of the season and the third and final race in the Round of 16. Four of the 16 Playoff drivers will be chopped from championship contention after the race, giving us 12 remaining drivers when the Round of 12 begins next in the South Point 400 at Las Vegas. There will be a few guys driving as if it were the last race of their career and would wreck their mothers for a win.
I find Ryan Blaney the most interesting candidate to win this week because he’s sitting last in points, 25 behind Clint Bowyer in the 12th and final transfer position. He could make it on points with lots of help but I’m sure he’ll be going all out to get the win. I asked Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook manager Ed Salmons if he’d be posting Blaney at 20-1 odds to win after being 25-1 last week at Darlington and he said no because Blaney runs well at Bristol.
Yes, Blaney runs extremely well at Bristol even though he has just one top-five in 10 Cup starts there. In his five starts while driving for Team Penske he’s led 449 laps and that’s not including the All-Star race at Bristol in July when he led a race-high 72 laps before finishing sixth.
So why hasn’t won yet? He looks like a solid candidate to win at Bristol. Well, on two occasions he’s been wrecked by lap traffic, once while leading the race. Bristol’s half-mile layout gets traffic lapped quickly and they’re all on top of each other. It makes it tougher to pass for the leaders. Blaney has had trouble with this.
But the fact that he’s always finding his way to the front is what attracts me to him this week, and I also love the desperation angle of him forced to run his best race or else his title hopes go down the drain. He started the season so well, but it was mostly with the race package featuring engines producing 550 horsepower on the larger tracks.
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