AVONDALE, Ariz. — With a second place in the season finale, Ryan Blaney became a first-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.
The No. 12 Ford river finished 1.230 seconds behind winner Ross Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet but was the best finisher of the Championship 4 drivers after 312 laps at Phoenix Raceway.
It’s the second consecutive championship and fourth overall in NASCAR’s premier series for Team Penske, which won the 2022 title with Joey Logano. It capped another memorable year for team owner Roger Penske, who also won his 19th Indianapolis 500 with Josef Newgarden.
“Just so proud of this team,” Blaney told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “Unbelievable year, unbelievable playoffs for us. To win back-to-back Cup titles for Mr. Penske, that’s so special. Having my family here, winning my first Cup title. I got emotional in the car. I’m not a very emotional guy.”
RACE RECAP: Updates from throughout the season finale
Kyle Larson, who was trying to win his second title in three years, finished third, followed by Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron, who led the first 92 laps but became the first Phoenix pole-sitter in three years to fall short of winning the finale and championship.
“Once the track rubbered in, we got really tight,” Byron said. “Especially when we lost the lead on track, we just had a big balance shift and couldn’t gain a lot of speed through (Turns 1 and 2), just kind of having to really over-slow the car, get it to the bottom. That’s all we had there.”
Christopher Bell, the fourth driver eligible for the championship, finished last after slamming the wall with a broken right front brake rotor on Lap 108.
After falling from second to sixth on his final pit stop with 35 laps remaining under yellow, Blaney jumped up to third on the restart and then made the critical pass of Larson for second on Lap 292 shortly after the cars nearly collided on the frontstretch.
“Just time to go to work,” Blaney said about his charge to the title. “We did a good job of getting to where we needed to be. (Larson and Byron) had two good pit stops. Just need to go to work. Hoping our car was good enough, which it was.”
Despite their furious battle over the final run, Larson said Blaney “never touched me” during the race and praised their mutual respect.
“His car was really fast,” Larson said of Blaney. “Really the last few months, especially here today. Our pit crew really kept us in the game. We weren’t the greatest on the track, but I was just hoping for pit stops because I knew the way our team executed our lights, the way our pit crew can execute a fast pit stop, I knew that was going to be our only shot really to win.
“They did everything in their power to give us the winning job done there. Huge thank you to them. I needed to come out the leader on that restart. Ross got a really good start from the second row. I’m not sure if it would have made a difference. I was just not as good as a few guys, especially Blaney and Ross probably. It would have been difficult. But my team did a really good job all season, so I’m extremely proud of them. We had an up-and-down year and we finally put together two solid weeks in a row. I don’t know if we’ve done that all year. We’ll come back next year and try to be stronger.”
Chastain led the final 31 laps to become the first driver ineligible for the championship to win the season finale in the 10th season since the elimination playoff structure was introduced in 2014. It was the second victory of the season and fourth overall for the Trackhouse Racing star who made the championship round last year.
“We did something else that’s never been done before,” Chastain told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns. “For everyone on this team, this vision for Trackhouse and what this was was goals like this. They were lofty.”
Chastain took his first lead on Lap 117 from Kevin Harvick, who finished seventh in the final Cup start of his career. Harvick’s longtime sponsor will move to Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet in 2024.
“Obviously next year with Busch Light, I couldn’t think of anything I would want to do more is to try to be like Kevin Harvick,” Chastain said. “Racing him early in the race was bucket list little kid in me. Racing (a NASCAR video game) in 2005, I drove as the 29 GM Goodwrench car. (of Harvick) Now I’m driving a Chevy for GM to victory lane, a Camaro.
“I am beside myself that we were able to do that.”
Blaney closed the playoffs with a sixth, second, first and second to win the title in his first Championship 4 appearance during his eighth full-time season. He qualified for the playoffs with a May 30 victory in the Coca-Cola 600 but finished no higher than sixth in the next 16 races before winning at Talladega Superspeedway.
“It’s somewhat of an up-and-down year, but you’re going to have those moments,” Blaney said. “Through the summer we just worked really hard to try to get back where we needed to be. Kind of set a deadline for the playoffs. We met that deadline.
“Just super proud of the effort by everybody at Team Penske who put tons and tons of hours into hard work. No one really got down. They just put their heads down, and they decided to really put in a lot of work, and it showed up, especially these playoffs the last five weeks.”
The son of former Cup driver Dave Blaney, Ryan is a third-generation driver but the family’s first asphalt champion (after his father, uncle Dave and grandfather Lou made their names with dirt track championships).
“It’s meant everything,” Ryan Blaney said. “Obviously, I come from a family of racers, my grandfather, dad and uncle. Dad is obviously who I grew up watching and admiring (and) wanted to be like. To be able to do what he did, because as a kid I just wanted to do what dad did, so to be able to race and let alone compete for wins and championships, still have my parents around, people that you look up to that are still around, it makes it even more special.”
