Blaney Eyes Iowa Speedway Repeat

NEWTON, Iowa — Ryan Blaney is trending in the right direction at just the right time.

After a rough stretch that saw his number of DNFs mount to seven in the first 20 races of the NASCAR Cup Series season, the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford has scored two straight top 10s heading to Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350 Powered by Ethanol at Iowa Speedway.

Blaney is the defending winner at the 0.875-mile short track, where he led 201 of the 350 laps in last year’s series debut there, including the last 88.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Blaney said. “That’s a special place for me and for my mom’s side of the family. We had a lot of people there last year supporting us. That was a fun victory lane. It’s not often that you get to have 80 people with you in victory lane, and heck, half of them I’d never met before — kids of cousins I haven’t seen in years.

“So that was special. So, I’d like to go up there and defend, and we’ll see if we can do that.”

With strips of new pavement added in the corners for last year’s race, the track features a variety of nuances drivers must master.

“It was a tricky one,” Blaney said, “because getting into (Turn) 1, your braking point was old pavement, but then you would get to new pavement like 10 to 15 car-lengths later. So, it was like judging, ‘Hey, I have to break and lift here in the old stuff, but then I have to recalibrate for when I get to the new stuff.

“The corner pace was incredibly high, but I still think it put on a good show.”

The DNFs aside, Blaney hasn’t had a quarrel with the speed in his cars this year.

“We’ve just been in some bad spots at the wrong time and have not been able to get the finishes that we want or deserve,” he said. “I look at it as we’re doing a lot of good things, and I’m happy with where our group is at, and I’m happy with the speed.

“I’m hoping that things smooth up for us, and that’s all you can do, really.”

With a June 1 victory at Nashville and his current seventh-place position in the standings, Blaney, for practical purposes, has clinched a spot in the Cup Series Playoffs.

With four races left in the regular season, however, the competition for the final three berths in the postseason intensifies.

Bubba Wallace added his name to the Playoff rolls with his dramatic victory last Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That left Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing teammates Chris Buescher and Ryan Preece on opposite sides of the Playoff bubble, with Buescher 42 points to the good over his fellow Ford driver.

Buescher led 15 laps in last year’s Iowa Race but finished 18th. Preece, who has an Iowa victory to his credit in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, was 27th in the No. 41 Ford for Stewart-Haas Racing.

Equally intense is the battle for the Regular Season Championship. Chase Elliott leads Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron by four points, with another teammate, Kyle Larson, just 15 points back in third.

A Hendrick driver has topped the standings after the last 20 Cup races, with Elliott, Byron and Larson sharing the honors. Blaney was the series leader for the first two races of the season.

Larson was fast at Iowa last year, and he sees Sunday’s race as an opportunity.

“We had a good weekend going there last year, securing the pole, a stage win and leading a lot of laps before getting caught up in an incident,” said Larson, whose 34th-place finish in the inaugural Cup race did not reflect the performance of his No. 5 Chevrolet.

“I think it’s going to be quite a bit different this year. I watched the IndyCar race (July 13), and it appeared the new pavement has changed quite a bit, and I imagine the grip level has changed quite a bit more. I don’t really know yet but it’s going to be different. But as I said before, we were good last year, so hopefully we’ll be good again.”