Ryan Blaney and crew chief Jonathan Hassler feel they can earn the No. 1 seed in the NASCAR Cup Series Chase, even though they sit 120 points back of leader Denny Hamlin with four races left in the regular season.
It’s hard to say their confidence is misplaced, however. Blaney will start from the pole in Sunday’s race at Iowa, a track he won at in 2024, while Hamlin qualified 29th and could drop further back after his team made post-qualifying adjustments due to brake issues.
The next four races at Iowa, Richmond, New Hampshire and Daytona line up particularly well for Blaney, who runs well at all of them. It doesn’t hurt that Team Penske has been good at all four venues recently. There’s a reason why Blaney is the odds-on favorite to win Sunday’s Iowa Corn 350.
Stars are aligning for Ryan Blaney
“The next four races, the tracks have been really good for us,” Blaney said Saturday at Iowa after qualifying. “It’s a really strong end to the regular season for our group, and kind of tracks where our program has excelled: kind of shorter racetracks like that, and then the speedways we’ve been really good, too.
“There’s a big opportunity. We just hope we execute and keep the speed that we’ve been having at these types of places, and [you] never know what’s going to happen.”
Blaney has put Team Penske and Ford as a whole on his back for much of the 2026 season, and it’s shown in his results. He has two wins and 15 top 10s in 22 races this year and currently has the best average finish of his career (11.3). A third win on Sunday would match his win totals from 2021, 2023 and 2024 and would be the second-most he’s had in any campaign, putting him on pace for a career-year all the way around.