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As the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs approached last season, Ryan Blaney and his team were, as he looks back on it now, afterthoughts. The Team Penske driver had a lone victory in the win column to make him postseason eligible, but his group was far from the strongest of those looking at a championship run. But the No. 12 team stepped up when it mattered most, going on a tear to end the 2023 season with two wins and three more top-six finishes in the last six races as Blaney was crowned champion for the first time. A year later, as another postseason approaches, the narrative is entirely different. "The last two months, I feel like we've really flexed our muscle and shown we're a top-three team right now," Blaney told ESPN. "My mindset -- and I talk to my dad about his stuff -- is: How do we make every other team afraid of this group getting close to the playoffs? That's what we did last year in the Round of 8; we got everybody scared of us that we were clicking off some things and were the best car the last month of the year by far. How do we continue to bring that, not intimidation, but mindset, to other people? "That's important in every sport. You have teams that intimidate other groups because they're strong and execute really well. How do we do that as well? So, it's just a confidence thing from last year to this year. We know we can do it [because] we did it before." Confidence within the team was a recurring talking point for Blaney when discussing the tone of the 2024 season. A championship win might be the ultimate feat in Cup Series racing, but there has been no resting on past successes or trying to prove it wasn't a fluke. A demeanor shift happened after winning at Talladega Superspeedway in October last year. It was the victory that started the team's run to the title. Travis Geisler, the Team Penske competition director, has felt Blaney has been "laser" focused ever since, and his driver doesn't deny the significance of that particular victory. Talladega came a week after Blaney was collected in a multicar crash at Texas Motor Speedway. It was a hit to his chance to advance in the postseason as he fell 11 points below the cutline, and the team knew things weren't looking good. "[Talladega] was the perfect moment for something like that to happen because we were kind of down, needed a huge day, got it, and honestly overexceeded the day we needed," Blaney said. "Gong on the run we did after Talladega was great, and it stayed through the winter and into this year, and that mindset with everyone in this group is what I want to keep because it's been working for us. It's fun when you hit that sweet spot, and you have to make the most of it when you're there." After a quiet start to the 2024 season, Blaney won two of the six races before NASCAR's Olympics-induced summer break. He also led 271 laps in that stretch to catapult from 12th in the championship standings to fifth. No longer flying under the radar, Blaney hasn't hidden how great it feels that his team isn't being overlooked as the championship contenders they deserve to be. And they shouldn't be: Blaney is working with the same crew he has had for a number of years, a group good good enough to fight for a championships if not for a crash in the Round of 8 in the 2021 postseason or the mistakes he made behind the wheel in 2022. The end of the two-week break for the Olympics gives way to the final push to the postseason. There will be no switch to flip, however. All season has been a title defense for Blaney, but he had a very specific message for his team when addressing them at the race shop coming out of the break: The championship run begins now. "We've got to perform every week, and we have a lot of people gunning for us to take our title away," he said. "We need to keep this intensity now and get the momentum ready for the last 10 races." That's why life is not much different for Blaney today than it was a year ago. Sure, there are a few added responsibilities because he's the face of the sport. Yes, he is now serenaded by calls of "Hey, champ" from the fans. And there is the weekly reminder of the exclusive club he's in by way of the champion patch stitched on his firesuit. But there is only one thing that has Blaney's attention. "Just try to do it again," he said. "That's the hardest part now. How the heck do we do it again? You could say, 'Well, just do what you did last year,' but everything always changes." If it were that easy, Blaney wouldn't be trying to do something no other driver has done in the NASCAR playoff elimination era: win back-to-back championships. A unique opportunity to do something no one else has isn't lost on him. "Hopefully, the stars line up for us where we can do it, and everyone can stop talking about it, and we can be the first," Blaney said. "It's got to happen sometime."
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