Ever since Alan Kulwicki won the first of what has now reached 60 NASCAR Cup races at Phoenix Raceway in 1988 – a race I was there to witness – there’s been something about the flat one-mile oval in the desert that it seems as if it likes to play favorites.

I’d kind of compare it to Darlington Raceway, which obviously is a whole different animal, but when the extremely difficult Lady In Black takes a shine to a driver, she typically keeps that shine going from race to race.

It’s the same for Phoenix, which has had a number of Cup drivers that have been its favorites. The most notable track record holder for wins is Kevin Harvick, who captured nine of his 60 career Cup wins there. If Darlington is the Lady In Black, Phoenix could easily be the Lady In the Desert.

Others that have been successful at Phoenix include four-time winners Jimmie Johnson and Joey Logano, three-time winner Dale Earnhardt Jr., and two-time winners Jeff Burton, Jeff Gordon, Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin, Matt Kenseth, Ryan Newman and Mark Martin.

Now add Ryan Blaney’s name to having become Phoenix’s favorite flavor. The 2023 Cup champion captured his 18 career win in NASCAR’s premier series in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 500. It was also Blaney’s second win in a row at the one-miler, having won last fall’s playoff race there as well.

It’s not like success at Phoenix has crept up on Blaney. Rather, he’s earned it: In 21 Cup starts, he has two wins, but more importantly, has shown great consistency and mastery of the track with 11 top-five and 15 top-10 finishes. After qualifying fifth for Sunday’s race, Blaney hung around the top 10 for much of the race, including winning Stage 1.

Blaney makes it a Team Penske weekend sweep

What stands out even more about Blaney’s win is two-fold: first, he timed his pass to take the lead from Ty Gibbs with 10 laps to go perfectly. Second, he helped Team Penske pull off a sweep of the crossover weekend in the desert, as teammate Josef Newgarden won Saturday’s IndyCar race for the second time in his own career.

Because crossover weekends are relatively rare – where two different racing series combine to share a track on the same weekend for their own separate events – Blaney knew how important it was to put additional frosting on the Penske cake after Newgarden baked it Saturday.

“Josef put the pressure on us yesterday,” Blaney said. “He let us know that at our Penske dinner last night. He said this weekend is going to be absolutely ruined if you guys don’t do it on Sunday. So he put the pressure on us.”

Blaney and Cup teammate Joey Logano, who finished 31 Sunday after being involved in a crash with 59 laps to go, have both gained a reputation of being two of the best come-from-behind drivers in NASCAR – particularly from errors – a fact that was once again illustrated with the way Blaney won.

Even with the fact that he won Stage 1, it’s questionable how many people would have predicted a Blaney win due to a pair of later incidents that put him and the No. 12 Ford Mustang twice behind the proverbial eight ball.

Here’s how Blaney battled back from adversity to take the checkers

First, Blaney had to bounce back not once, but twice from pit stop incidents both due to loose wheels, including being penalized for pitting outside his box to have Logano’s team fix one of those loose wheels, sending him to the back of the field twice.

“We had our issue on pit road and kind of battled back from that, then had another one and battled back from that one, too,” Blaney said. “We were able to overcome a lot of different things today.

“I keep the end goal in mind, how do we get back to where we need to be. It was early enough in the race to where we still had enough left to be able to try to get back up there before Stage 3. We were able to do that.

“Hey, people make mistakes all the time. It’s just encouraging to know it’s okay, there’s plenty of race left, we’re going to do it, we can get back in our groove. Just learn from them and move on. Yeah, I think we did a good job of just keeping everybody, steadying the ship. It’s going to be okay, we can dig out of this hole.“

In the end, Blaney did indeed dig out of that hole, turning those prior pit road issues into pit road gold. While several other drivers took four tires on the final stop with 12 laps to go, Blaney’s crew chief, Jonathan Hassler, chose to go with just two tires to try and gain quick track position on the restart.

The strategy worked like a charm. Blaney rocketed from the second row on the restart and easily passed leader Ty Gibbs two laps later, holding on for the final 10 circuits to take home the trophy. Gibbs’ teammate, Christopher Bell, finished second by .399 seconds despite leading a race-high 176 laps of the 312-lap event.

A perfect word for how his team helped him win

Blaney had the perfect word to describe how he fought back for the win: “perseverance.”

“Everybody on the 12 group persevered all day,” Blaney said. “We had a couple mistakes that we learned from, got better, had to come from the back a couple times. Jonathan made a great call to take two and we were able to get the lead and hold them off.”

But it wasn’t as easy as it may have looked. Had the race gone a few extra laps, Blaney admired, “I don’t know how many more laps I could have held them off.”

One thing of note that Blaney was made aware of post-race: His 18 career Cup win ties him on the NASCAR all-time wins list with Harry Gant, Geoff Bodine, Neil Bonnett, Kasey Kahne and Ryan Newman.

“That’s just special to be part of the group of those guys with Cup wins,” Blaney said. “Just happy to be part of a group like that. It means a lot.”

Blaney moves into second place in the Cup standings with the victory, 60 points behind Cup leader Tyler Reddick, whose record-breaking streak of three consecutive wins to start the season came to an end Sunday – although the 23XI Racing driver still finished with a respectable eighth-place showing.

Though he obviously would have liked to win all 36 points-paying Cup races this season, Reddick was realistic that the win streak would come to an end eventually. And even though he didn’t make it four in a row, he pronounced it still being a good points day.

“We scored the fourth most amount of points on the day,” he added. “That’s kind of what we need to keep doing all year to keep the lead that we have and try and hang on to it. Solid day. If we’re not going to win, these are the kind of days we need to have.”

Rounding out the top five, defending Cup champion Kyle Larson roared back to finish third, followed by Gibbs and teammate Denny Hamlin.

The Cup Series continues its west coast swing next Sunday at the high-speed 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway.