By Caleb Whisler, Staff Writer
The pressure of the being a part of the NASCAR youth movement is starting to become tiresome to some drivers.
One of those drivers is Ryan Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Ford Fusion for Team Penske.
Earlier in the day, International Speedway Corporation president, John Saunders, told investors in a quarterly earnings conference that a factor of the company’s decline in attendance is due to the “lack of star power” amongst the star power.
Blaney knows that these young stars are trying. However, he believes there is no pressure for the “sake of the sport”.
“Not really. Honestly, this whole young guys need to win now thing is getting old. We’re trying. We’re trying our hardest. It’s not like I go out there and I’m happy for fifth every single week,” Blaney stated.
“Any other guy under the age of 25 I’ll just say is the same way. It’s not a competition here between young guys and old guys, it’s a competition between 39 other cars and yourself. No matter what your age is or your experience level everyone is trying to accomplish the same goal.
With only six different winners in 17 races of the season, Blaney believes that a variation of winners would be good, but those drivers are dominating the races. He believes those drivers have found something that works well that other teams have yet to find. He believes that the No. 12 team would have to just work harder.
“You can’t be down about something like that. You just have to try to work harder and try to get your team to where it is. I just think more variation of winners would be good, but those guys are dominating. They’ve found something and good for them. They deserve it. They’ve worked hard enough to do it and we’ve got to work harder to be able to run with those guys,” Blaney continued.
While Blaney appears to be bothered by it, Austin Dillon offered a question for Saunders.
“I just want to know what we do about it,” Dillon said Thursday. “How do you move forward with that because the guys that are in this sport are talented enough to win. We haven’t made any changes this year to the packages that we’re running. Each and every week you probably can guess … who the top three guys are probably going to be. I bet if everybody had to bet their house on it, they’d take between three guys right now, maybe four. I bet he would too.”
Ryan’s got it right. Junior wasn’t packing the stands. The attendence and tv ratings fell almost the entire time he was racing. This is not a dig at Junior. No one driver can power the sport.
Harvick said it best, for all the years of hype and great equipment, Jr hurt Nascar the product because he never reached the top. Nascar “biggest” star finishes mid-pack yet again. How would baseball look like if the Redsox and Yankees where 60 wins teams. Can’t expect the “young guns” to fix what took years to break.