Ryan Blaney eyes Las Vegas turnaround: ‘What are you willing to push it to?’

LAS VEGAS -- Ryan Blaney has had a string of bad luck at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, typically reserved for the casinos. But with postseason stakes higher than ever in the Round of 8 of the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, Blaney is back at the table and hoping he has the right cards in hand for Sunday's South Point 400 (5:30 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App). MORE: Las Vegas schedule | At-track photos Vegas puns aside, Blaney's recent history at the 1.5-mile track has been abysmal. The 2023 Cup Series champion crashed during practice for each of the last two Vegas races, starting in a backup car, then incurring damage during the race. Saturday seemed to be a turn of his fortune, escaping with a clean practice and qualifying session that set his No. 12 Team Penske Ford 14th on the starting grid. What led to his prior mishaps was, in part, low tire pressure; an intentional setup decision to help find speed because cars with looser handling tend to race faster at tracks like Las Vegas. Blaney encouraged his crew chief, Jonathan Hassler, not to back down if it means making the No. 12 Ford fast. "It's, what are you willing to push it to?" Blaney said Saturday. "And I've never been a big fan of reeling something in. Like, I feel like if you're trying to get the most out of your stuff and keep working on it and refine it -- I mean, you can't just keep doing the same thing, which we aren't. So just refining what you think is fast and good." Blaney added he felt no hesitation or trepidation returning to the track or climbing inside the race car despite his previous sour luck, resiliently putting any errors in the rearview mirror and looking out the windshield instead. "I don't ever try to think of that stuff like being hesitant or anything like that in the back of your mind," Blaney said. "It's just some things that happen every now and then. Yeah, they stink when it happens for sure, not only for me, but for everybody, right? We have to get a new car ready, and it's no fun for anyone. But no, we've had good discussions and a good kind of route to go." Playing to his benefit is that despite his dismal last two Vegas races, Team Penske or its affiliated team, Wood Brothers Racing, has won each of the past two, with Joey Logano winning in 2024 and Josh Berry scoring his first career Cup win in March. Those notes are excellent to look back on, but there's one problem: Blaney has limited notes of his own. "I finished in the fall last year. I was just eight laps down," Blaney said with a laugh. "But hopefully, we can learn from what Josh had in the spring and build off of what we learned at Kansas. I thought we were decent at Kansas. I didn't think we were the best. I thought we were kind of seventh-, eighth-place car at Kansas behind some Toyotas and a couple of Hendrick cars. But hopefully we learned a little bit there and we're able to apply it for this weekend. So yeah, just relying heavily on previous races here, from our other teammates and then taking what we learned a couple weeks ago to hopefully be where you want to be."