The Las Vegas Motor Speedway is a track that probably doesn’t evoke good memories for Ryan Blaney, but he isn’t going to let bad experiences dictate his expectations this weekend.
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During an interaction with Frontstretch posted on X, the Penske driver was asked about his thoughts on the track, considering that “this place has kind of been a pain” for the No. 12 team in recent years, to which he responded with optimism, noting that he approaches every race with the belief that he can be competitive.
“I go into every weekend, no matter the track record here or your history here, looking forward to it and being optimistic that you’re going to be in the ballgame.”
The optimism is likely fueled by the progress Blaney witnessed at Kansas Speedway. After struggling to find the necessary speed at 1.5-mile tracks earlier in the season, the organization believes it finally made a meaningful step forward.
Blaney finished P5 at Kansas after starting 25th, while teammate Austin Cindric, with his P2 finish, also showed enough pace to believe a victory was possible under different circumstances. Joey Logano also ran strong after starting from pole position. However, a flat tire dropped him to P20.
Continuing in the interview, Blaney added, “I was very pleased with our performance at Kansas. We’ve found 1.5-miles to be a place we’ve been really wanting to get better, and I think we’ve made a good gain to get closer to some of those guys.”
The importance of that improvement goes beyond one strong finish. Blaney now has a clearer idea of what Team Penske needs from its cars on intermediate tracks. Moreover, the splitter changes have brought the field closer, with Toyotas having to reinvent the edge that they had earlier in the season.
“I don’t think it’s fully out of reach,” Blaney said. “So that’s promising. We all learned from last week and can rely on it here tomorrow.”
The challenge is transferring the information from Kansas to Las Vegas within only a few days. Blaney acknowledged that there is not enough time to completely start over as they have another intermediate track lined up at Charlotte after this. The No. 12 team is trying to build momentum without banking on major experiments.
“You’re just gathering information, so it’s easy to turn it around, especially when you have a good week,” he said. “I feel like if there was a dumpster fire last week, then you’re kind of pulling your hair out. That’s a lot harder to figure out than if you were close and then you can kind of think on it.”
That matters particularly at a track where Blaney’s results have not reflected what he believes has been a reasonable level of underlying pace.
His record at the track has been marked by poor finishes. In the Next Gen era, he’s only managed a single top-5 finish, which came in the 2024 spring race. Also, in the last three of the four starts, he’s finished 32nd or worse.
But he said those results have not always been caused by a fundamentally slow race car, and he highlighted reasons that have prevented the team from converting its speed into results.
“I feel like our finishes haven’t been very good here. You know, we’ve had blown tires and problems and stuff like that, but I feel like the pace of our stuff has been decent.”
The reasons are important for Blaney, as he continues to keep his title hopes alive. His team has already had to overcome several setbacks during the postseason, including the starting-position disadvantage created by NASCAR’s performance metric. Blaney’s Kansas recovery helped limit the damage, but he remains well behind Kyle Larson in the championship standings.
In an earlier interaction on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, the driver acknowledged that his situation may require an aggressive approach over the final six races. With Larson continuing to pile on points, Blaney feels that the No.12 team needs to win at least two of those races to have a realistic shot at the title.
This adds further weight to the next two intermediate-track races at Las Vegas and the Charlotte. However, instead of succumbing to that pressure or letting his Las Vegas history affect his mindset, Blaney is focusing on the improvements made in recent weeks.
“It’s just last week we had some bad stuff happen to us, you know, and some of it self-induced, some of it, you know, just circumstantial.”
However, instead of dwelling on those issues, Blaney wants to see whether the progress made at Kansas translates into a clean result at Las Vegas.
His approach is simple: past results may provide context, but they should not determine expectations before the race begins.
For a driver chasing a championship while carrying a difficult Las Vegas history, that optimism is part of what the No. 12 team needs. Kansas gave Blaney reason to believe there has been progress. Vegas will now reveal whether that progress helps him overcome the track that has frustrated him for years.