Ryan Blaney is pushing back again on the NASCAR qualifying metric. The Team Penske driver has started 24th or worse in three of the first four Chase races because of it.
Blaney wants NASCAR to commit to one approach when weather cancels qualifying. He made his point plainly on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
“Either just do one thing or the other.”
The metric takes 70% of a car’s finish in the previous race and 30% of its owner points position. It normally sets the order for qualifying. When qualifying is canceled, it sets the starting lineup instead.
Weather canceled qualifying at Darlington, Bristol and Kansas. That covers three of the first four races in the Chase. MotorBiscuit has broken down the metric’s role in the Chase.
Blaney entered the Chase as the No. 2 seed. A last-lap wreck at Daytona left him 33rd in the regular-season finale. That result put him 24th on the grid at Darlington, where he finished fourth.
Qualifying went ahead at World Wide Technology Raceway, and Blaney qualified third. A right-front brake rotor failed on Lap 155 while he ran sixth. He finished 35th.
That finish put him 29th on the grid at Bristol. He led a race-high 202 laps and won Stage 2. Contact from Carson Hocevar on Lap 458 sent him into the wall, and he finished 33rd. The two drivers then fought on pit road.
Under the formula, that 33rd-place finish made up 23.1 of Blaney’s 24.9 metric score for Kansas. His sixth-place points position added only 1.8. He started 25th and drove to fifth, scoring 37 points.
Blaney’s frustration showed before the Kansas race.
“I got done saying last week, ‘Oh, the metric is what it is.’ And now I’m starting to slowly hate it like you all for what’s been happening to us.”
The 2026 Chase runs 10 races with no eliminations. Points are reset and seeded once at the start, and the driver with the most points after the finale wins the title. A poor finish stays on the board for the rest of the Chase.
Starting deep also makes stage points harder to collect. Blaney has had to pass much of the field before he can race for those points.
Not every driver has felt the metric the same way. Joey Logano started 13th at Darlington, second at Bristol and first at Kansas. Logano told NASCAR.com the metric still rewards performance and that he personally does not have a huge issue with it.
Others have been more critical. Kevin Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast that he hates the metric. He wants NASCAR to return to a random draw for qualifying order.
NASCAR does not plan to change the system during the Chase. Mike Forde, NASCAR’s vice president of racing communications, addressed the issue on Friday.
“Having two sets of rules within the 10-race Chase is something we want to avoid.”
Forde said a change this season is very unlikely, but he expects one in the offseason. MotorBiscuit has more on NASCAR’s plans for the metric.
Blaney joked about the weather after Kansas in comments to Racing America’s Matt Weaver.
“It’s just everywhere has its difficulties when you have to start in the back, and maybe it’ll rain in Vegas, and we’ll actually be benefited by the metrics.”
Blaney is fifth in the Chase standings, 91 points behind leader Kyle Larson.