Winning would solve everything for Ryan Blaney

Ryan Blaney has three top-fives in the last three NASCAR Cup Series races after he finished third in Sunday's Bank of America 400 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. 

Yet, the 2023 Cup Series champion still finds himself a distant fifth in the standings, 85 points back of leader Kyle Larson with four races left in the season. A distinct lack of victories in the Chase — Larson has two — is showing. 

Still, the No. 12 team has put together another excellent season and, perhaps most importantly, figured out its deficiencies at intermediate tracks. With the season finale being held at a 1.5-mile venue at Homestead-Miami Speedway, that's huge. 

Blaney finished 10th in Stage 1 and second in Stage 2, though he couldn't match the pace of the Joe Gibbs Racing duo of Chase Briscoe and Christopher Bell over the final run. On a day where Blaney had an early pit road penalty, a third-place finish was quite solid.

Ryan Blaney overcomes early penalty to finish third at Charlotte

"I just didn’t feel like I had the pace to hang with the 20 or the 19 early in runs," Blaney told USA Network. "They could kind of get out there and I would start to close the gap, but it just wasn’t enough to make up for the early-run pace they had.

"Overall, really proud of our day after my mistake, like I said, and really proud of the last three weeks, the places we’ve really needed to get better at, the mile-and-a-halves, we’ve been able to do that. Three solid finishes. Sticking in there. Just got to keep going to work."

Blaney will have to make up an average of 21 points a race on Larson if he is to win the title, and winning is the easiest way to do so. Fortunately for Blaney and the No. 12 team, Phoenix, Talladega and Martinsville are three of his best tracks, and he's been good at Homestead as of late. 

"Myself and I think this whole group, they go into every weekend thinking we can win, just having confidence in yourself," Blaney said. "And this group has been awesome to work with. I love my guys. But Phoenix has been good to us in the past. I don’t know what’s going to happen at Talladega. No one does. But then we’ve got Martinsville and Miami.

"The best thing we can do is one race at a time, just try to go do our job the best that we can, and hopefully if we can do that we can find victory lane a couple more times."

Blaney has won thrice this season, most recently taking the checkered flag at New Hampshire on Aug. 23.