After winning his first NASCAR Cup Series championship, Ryan Blaney wanted to go ahead and add another ring, a wedding ring. Blaney got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Gianna Tulio soon after the season ended.
Of course, getting engaged in the offseason gives you plenty of time for planning a wedding. Ryan and Gianna got to work right away. If you haven’t planned a wedding, it can be interesting but isn’t always fun.
Besides, how do you even agree on certain things? Like themes and tablecloths and where everyone will sit? For Ryan Blaney, he usually (smartly) defers to his fiancée.
“That was – day after [the engagement] we were wedding planning,” Blaney told Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports in a recent interview. “We picked our venue out, so we locked that in. So, that was a big part of it. I’m learning how much work goes into wedding planning, it’s a lot. Yeah, picking the venue out was good, that took a lot of weight off our shoulders, Gianna and I.
“I try to just give her the reigns on everything, just do it you’ve got full control of this, but she wants to include me in a lot of it, which is like alright, that’s fine. But I usually just agree with her. She’ll be like ‘What do you think about this?’ and then I’ll just ask her ‘Well, what do you think?’ and then I’ll just agree with whatever she says.”
A lot of hard work is ahead of Ryan Blaney. Both on the NASCAR track and at home.
Ryan Blaney returns to Phoenix for first time since championship
For the first time since Ryan Blaney won the NASCAR Cup Series championship, he will return to the track he did it at. Blaney did not win the Phoenix championship race, but he finished runner-up to race winner and new rival, Ross Chastain.
Now, Blaney is not the Phoenix favorite. That honor goes to Kyle Larson who put the Cup Series on notice last week at Las Vegas. Larson is the overall favorite at +550. However, Blaney is not far behind.
Tied for second with Hendrick Motorsports driver and potential future brother-in-law, William Byron, Blaney comes in at +700 odds. Those odds put him above Chastain in terms of favorites for Sunday in the Shriners Children’s 500.
Going into the weekend, will the Fords still have qualifying speed on the short track? What will the new Toyota bodies do under the new package? Ryan Blaney and Ross Chastain at Phoenix part two – which driver are you taking?
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