If Ryan Blaney\u2019s analysis of\u00a0the NASCAR Chase\u00a0is accurate, then his championship bid is already over after only three of 10 races in the run to the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t see that you can finish outside the top 30 multiple times and have a shot,\u201d Blaney said last week. \u201cIt\u2019s just going to be too much to make up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three days later, Blaney finished 33rd at Bristol Motor Speedway, the second consecutive finish outside the top 30 for\u00a0the 2023 Cup Series champion. Blaney has plummeted from second to sixth in the standings since the Chase began, and his frustrations\u00a0boiled over in a fight with Carson Hocevar, who bumped Blaney into a crash that ended a promising Bristol race after the Team Penske star led a race-high 202 laps.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand why he\u2019s upset,\u201d Hocevar said. \u201cThat\u2019s probably his championship. I\u2019d probably be mad, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the playoff system that existed the past 12 seasons, Bristol was a cutoff race in which four drivers were eliminated from title contention, and the points were reset for the rest of the field.<\/p>\n
In the Chase reintroduced by NASCAR this season, all 16 drivers remain mathematically eligible for the title but without a points reset \u2014 which leaves Blaney already on the fringe of contention.<\/p>\n
He trails leader Kyle Larson by 51 points, which is more than double his deficit to open the Chase.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Larson and Bristol winner Joey Logano are headed in the other direction by averaging more than 50 points per race since the Chase started.<\/p>\n
Larson has erased a 55-point deficit to take a one-point lead on top-seeded Denny Hamlin heading into a stretch of three 1.5-mile ovals where Larson has excelled. He has three wins apiece at Kansas Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the next two tracks on the Cup circuit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good, but there\u2019s still so much racing left,\u201d Larson said after a second at Bristol marked his third top five in a row (including\u00a0a Gateway victory that snapped a 51-race win drought). \u201cJust got to keep having good consistent days. We\u2019re going to some good tracks for us, but it could easily change a lot in the upcoming weeks. We\u2019ve just got to keep plugging away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Logano, who started the Chase ranked ninth with a 65-point deficit, has surged to third and trails by 16 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a big hole that we dug ourselves, and trying to make that up on the best teams, it\u2019s really hard to do that,\u201d Logano said. \u201cWe\u2019ve done a tremendous job, but it goes to show how quickly it can go the other way. You\u2019ve got to get hot at the right time and take advantage of the cars when you have them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Logano and crew chief Paul Wolfe set a weekly goal of averaging 40 points during the Chase to have a shot at winning the championship.<\/p>\n
In the first iteration of the Chase from 2004-13, the 10 Cup champions averaged a seventh-place finish over the final 10 races. But with the 2017 introduction of stages, two predetermined sections during every race in which the top 10 are awarded points, there is a greater emphasis on running well from green to checkered flag.<\/p>\n
Wolfe said the stage points make it possible to make up ground more quickly as Larson (38 stage points) and Logano (37) have shown in the past three races.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a team gets hot, and they\u2019re able to win stages, run up front and win a race or two, you can close that gap pretty quick,\u201d Wolfe said. \u201cMaybe quicker than all of us anticipated when these playoffs started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another way to close the gap is by winning. The value of a first-place finish was increased by 15 points this year, and the three Chase victories belong to three of the top four drivers in the standings (Larson, Logano and Darlington winner Christopher Bell).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you\u2019re going to have to win multiple races in the Chase to just keep up,\u201d Blaney said.<\/p>\n
NASCAR officials have reviewed video of the scuffle between Blaney and Hocevar, and no punishment is expected for either driver. Competition executives will meet Tuesday for a weekly postrace debrief that includes penalty discussions.<\/p>\n
In a similar post-race confrontation at Atlanta three years ago, Ross Chastain struck Noah Gragson, and neither driver was fined. NASCAR once put drivers on probation but removed that penalty from its rulebook this year.<\/p>\n
Hocevar said NASCAR would \u201close ticket sales\u201d if he was penalized for punching Blaney.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have to think not,\u201d he said. \u201cI kind of have to defend myself at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If Ryan Blaney\u2019s analysis of\u00a0the NASCAR Chase\u00a0is accurate, then his championship bid is already over after only three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":904485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-904484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}