Ryan Blaney in championship form as NASCAR playoffs loom

Ryan Blaney is having a fantastic 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, but he still seems to be flying under the radar even after his victory in Saturday's Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona. 

Blaney, the 2023 Cup Series champion, has seven DNFs this year. That's enough to keep most teams below the top-10 in the standings. 

But when Lady Luck has smiled on Blaney this season, he's been fast. In the 19 races that Blaney has finished, he has 10 top-five finishes and 14 top-10 results, including wins at Nashville and Daytona. He managed to finish second in the regular season standings and enters the postseason fourth on the playoff grid. 

Blaney will enter the playoffs on the heels of six consecutive top-10 finishes. 

"I think it speaks volumes to how good we have been when we’ve finished races," Blaney said during his post-race news conference on Saturday. "Obviously, you don’t want to have that many DNFs on the card, and I’d say half those DNFs we had a good chance of winning the race or at least running top 5.

It just shows that we’ve been running good through the races and the stages and maybe not gotten the finishes we deserved, but we just powered through it and go into next week, and this group has been really good all year to be honest with you.

Hopefully that just continues, but I’m really happy where we’re at, and I think it speaks volumes that we could be P2 in points and have kind of the DNFs and stuff like that through the regular season. I think it really speaks of how good this team is, and hopefully we can show it over the next 10 weeks."

Blaney is looking for a third consecutive Championship 4 appearance, and if he can get to Phoenix, he has an excellent shot at avenging his 2024 defeat and winning his second championship in three years. 

Quotes provided by NASCAR Media unless otherwise noted.