By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
Ryan Blaney surprised even himself Saturday when he topped series favorite Shane van Gisbergen for pole in Sunday’s Cup race from Watkins Glen International.
The 2023 champion out of the Team Penske outfit eyed van Gisbergen’s lap of 1:11.993 and, in his words “nailed” the Esses section early in the lap, which eventually led to an overall faster lap of 1:11:960.
“I knew the benchmark,” Blaney said. “I knew what Shane [van Gisbergen] ran in the first group. I knew you had to be probably in the low 72 [seconds], high 71s to get the pole. I knew I had a really good lap going.”
It was by 0.033 seconds, but Blaney had beaten SVG in road course qualifying, ending the New Zealander’s streak of three straight road course poles.
“People ask me all the time, ‘what does Shane do when you are out there that he is doing so much better?’ I am like. ‘I don’t really race with him that much.’ He is so much ahead that I don’t really see what he is doing. He is just so much faster.
“Bubba [Wallace] actually came up to me and said, ‘Congrats, but now he is going to make you look really bad.’
“One day at a time. I beat him one day. Ninety laps are going to be a little harder tomorrow to beat him but you gotta start somewhere, right?”
Qualifying is a key part of success on Sunday, but Blaney knows it doesn’t stop there. Having no top 10s in the season’s four road course races, he also hasn’t finished in the top five on one since the Indianapolis Road Course in 2021 (21 starts).
Blaney has also never won from pole in the Cup Series.
“We have been working really hard in our road course program. It is an area we aren’t as strong as we would like to be, and that is all of Team Penske,” he said. “We have done a great job of that. I thought we had a great run at Sonoma, didn’t get the finish I thought we deserved. But that was a big step. I felt pretty decent at Chicago. So, we are creeping up on this road course thing as a group.”
In a way, Blaney is a year behind the competition, having wrecked out of last year’s Watkins Glen race on Lap 1. The No. 12 crew had to rely on year-old practice notes to prep for the weekend.
“Trying to prepare for this weekend, we didn’t really have any race notes to talk about,” he said. “That was a little bit difficult, so we just looked at a lot of practice [notes from 2024] and where did we struggle at in practice.
“That was our best comparison to race pace and qualifying pace kind of trickled into that. It was a rough weekend last year. Like the two days were brutal and everyone’s confidence was pretty down. A huge props to everyone on our group on digging in and figuring out how we get better.”