Groundhog Day? Ryan Blaney's NASCAR playoff run shaping up like 2023 as he aims to defend title

Second in a series on the Championship Four — Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick and William Byron — who will race Sunday at Phoenix Raceway to determine the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series champion.

As Ryan Blaney flew under the checkered flag Sunday at the Martinsville Speedway, it was hard to know whether the penultimate race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season was taking place in Martinsville, Virginia, or Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 

It was Groundhog Day for Blaney and the No. 12 team, who won at Martinsville for the second year in a row to advance to the Championship Four with their backs against the wall. 

Blaney was over 2.5 seconds behind leader Kyle Larson with less than 50 laps remaining, but with an excellent long-run car beneath him, he passed Larson and Chase Elliott to take the lead with 15 laps to go. 

Blaney eventually drove to a lead of over 2.5 seconds, winning his third race of the 2024 season in dramatic fashion. 

It was a resilient performance for Blaney, who narrowly lost to Tyler Reddick the week before at Homestead-Miami in a race that had the potential to derail his championship hopes. 

Blaney’s runner-up finish in Miami encapsulated a season littered with heartbreak for the 30-year-old driver. In the season's second race at Atlanta, Daniel Suarez beat Blaney to the line by three one-thousandths of a second for the win. 

In St. Louis on June 2, Blaney’s No. 12 proved to be the dominant car over the race's second half. However, as Blaney took the white flag, his Mustang sputtered, and he ran out of gas, limping to a 24th-place finish while Penske teammate Austin Cindric took the checkered flag. 

Blaney showed Sunday that his season hasn’t been defined by the heartbreaking losses but by how the No. 12 team has responded to them. 

Two weeks after his last-lap loss in St. Louis, Blaney broke through for his first win of the season at Iowa. A month later, he won his second race of 2024 at Pocono and was deemed a championship favorite. 

While he couldn’t close the deal at Homestead, even that race was an example of the No. 12 team picking up the pieces from a 32nd-place finish at Las Vegas the week before. For the second year in a row, Blaney ran up front all race in South Florida only to fall short of the victory in the closing laps. 

Blaney’s 2024 season is playing out like his championship campaign in 2023 — a solid regular season that leads to an incredible playoff run. 

A season ago, Blaney finished second at Homestead-Miami, won at Martinsville and went on to win the championship at Phoenix. 

This season, Blaney finished second at Homestead, won at Martinsville, and had the chance to etch his name in the history books as a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion. 

For a driver who has solidified himself as one of NASCAR’s elite over the past two seasons, it’s a golden opportunity to prove that his first championship run wasn’t a fluke.