Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar stole all the headlines from Saturday night's Bass Pro Shops Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway, after a late-race incident sent the former into the wall and escalated into punches thrown on pit road. But what no one is talking about are the ramifications it's going to have in the Cup Series championship.
Blaney has been arguably the best driver in NASCAR this season. He's second in the season-long points, the only non-Toyota driver in the top five, and on Saturday night he surpassed Denny Hamlin for the most laps led in 2026. But after his 33rd-place DNF in Bristol, he's now 52 points out of the lead with only seven races to go.
And if the next three weeks go as expected for Blaney, you might as well stick a fork in his title hopes.
Ryan Blaney is in a deep points hole, and this time there's no one else to blame
A week ago at World Wide Technology Raceway in Gateway, Blaney was running inside the top five when a brake rotor exploded, relegating him to a 35th-place DNF. You might be able to afford one mulligan in the Chase, but not two, especially when these were the races the Team Penske star absolutely needed to take advantage of.
The Cup Series is now set to head to three straight 1.5-mile intermediate ovals. Despite his unremarkable performance as of late, this is where Denny Hamlin can be expected to put some distance on the field. His Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Christopher Bell should also be a heavyweight at Kansas Speedway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Blaney will be fortunate if he and Team Penske run in the top 10, given their struggles on earlier intermediates this season. Even then, he might find himself close to 100 points out of the lead with only four races to go. It's going to require a Herculean effort in those final weeks for him to have a chance.
And it was all so avoidable, as the driver admitted himself on Hamlin's Actions Detrimental podcast this week.
Ryan Blaney on Actions Detrimental:
— Taylor Kitchen (@_TaylorKitchen_) September 21, 2026
⁰“Looking back on it, I’d say it was a 50/50…” “really, I’d put it on both parties. He’s not 100% to blame. I’m not 100% to blame. I think it was just two guys fighting for the bottom at Bristol.”⁰⁰“There are things that I regret. I try to…
Blaney had passed Hocevar to move into second place while running down race leader Ty Gibbs. Despite having the position and the preferred line, he chose to block entering the next corner, and got turned. Knowing his big-picture position and who he was racing with, it was poor situational awareness and an extremely uncharacteristic mistake on his part.
If Blaney finishes second at Bristol, he's only 21 markers out of the lead, which is now held by Kyle Larson. If he'd won, he'd be tied with Hamlin, exactly one point behind.
Instead, he's nearly a full race's worth of points back in sixth. And given the way the schedule lines up from here, there might not be much he can do to overcome it.
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