JOLIET, Ill. — Ryan Blaney described last week’s cool-suit failure as a “snowball effect” of cascading problems that caused him to overheat at Sonoma Raceway. Any snowballs or other forms of frozen precipitation would have come in handy during his sweltering Sunday drive.
“Yeah, I was down bad,” Blaney said Friday, five days later. “I was down bad. Your boy was struggling.”
Blaney gutted out a sixth-place finish last weekend at Sonoma, visiting the track’s care center post-race for fluids after exiting his No. 12 Team Penske Ford. He arrives this weekend at a revived Chicagoland Speedway in better health, riding a consistent streak into Sunday’s eero 400 (6 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Blaney said when he flipped on his driver-cooling suit after Stage 1 of last weekend’s event, the system malfunctioned. Cycling through and resetting it didn’t work. As the cool suit’s fluid warmed, his No. 12 crew handed him a pressure-filled tool during a pit stop to help him flush the system. The race, however, stayed under mostly green-flag conditions the rest of the way, and Blaney didn’t have much chance for a water-bottle break as he navigated the intricate road course at speed.
Blaney tried to stash the tool in a small compartment inside the driver’s door, but it rattled loose to the floorboard — “into the abyss,” he said. Then leg cramps cropped up with 20 laps left, especially in his left calf entering the Turn 11 hairpin.
“I haven’t had that in a while, and like the worst place to cramp is your left calf at a road course, and I was happy I didn’t run off anywhere,” Blaney said. “But we got through it, and the AMR (medical) folks were great. They were at me really quick and got me fixed up after, so appreciate them for responding really quick from when I needed them. I think we diagnosed the problem, so that was good that we found the gremlin and were able to fix it, so hopefully it doesn’t happen again.”
Blaney has equaled a career-best streak of six consecutive top-10 finishes heading into Sunday’s 400-miler, the first event of the season’s second half. He’s also heading into a potentially opportune time to heat up — his last two summers have been marked by multirace performance spikes, and 11 of his 18 career Cup Series wins have arrived in the back half of the season.
Other bellwethers are a little less favorable. Ford is winless in the last 14 Cup Series races, dating back to his March 8 victory at Penske stronghold Phoenix Raceway. Ford drivers have also managed just one top-five result in the four events on 1.5-mile tracks in 2026, and Team Penske has weathered the last 10 races without a top-five finish — its longest dry spell since 2008.
Blaney has stayed steady through the season’s first half, slotting him third in the Cup standings but still 100-plus points behind Toyota drivers Denny Hamlin and Tyler Reddick, the campaign’s front-runners. Before his top-10 streak began, Blaney was 162 points off the top, but now stands 104 points back of Hamlin, the new series leader.
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Just eight races remain until the 16-driver Chase field is determined, and there’s more ground to gain to fulfill Blaney’s aspirations of claiming the Regular Season Championship and the advantageous No. 1 seed. Difficult but doable is how he sees it.
“You never know,” Blaney said after Friday’s practice. “I don’t know. You can see big, big swings week to week. Denny was able to do it off of really, really good performance, and tons and tons of points winning races. I think the 45 (Reddick) might have had a little bit of trouble while he was winning. Like, Michigan was a big one, then like in our case, we just kind of banged out some top 10s. Those guys had some problems, and we cut down a lot of points in the last just two weeks. So, you never know. We just try to focus on us. Like, I look at the points, but I don’t study it methodically. I kind of look at it a few times through the week to remind myself where we’re at, and just try to put together the best weekend.
“So you never know, the last couple months could get interesting, and we just try to get better week in, week out, and you never know where that stuff could go. So I’d say it’s not out of the question, but it’s going to be really, really hard to achieve.”
Blaney made four Chicagoland starts in Cup Series competition before the track was temporarily shuttered after the 2019 season, but he’s among a handful of drivers with recent experience here. Blaney joined Hamlin and defending Cup champion Kyle Larson in participating in a Goodyear tire test in April, and those laps may prove to be beneficial.
“They helped,” Blaney said. “Give us a little bit of a … I wouldn’t say head-start, but we were able to come here and learn for two days. Then as a driver, for me, up to speed a little bit faster of how to approach the race track. So, I hope it helps. We’ll see come Sunday.”