Six weeks ago at Sonoma Raceway, Ryan Blaney was collected in multiple wrecks not of his making and finished 36th. It was his eighth result of 28th or worse in the season's first 20 races, with not a single one of them coming due to driver error.
Of course, because most NASCAR fans only care about box score stats and don't pay attention to the context behind how those results are achieved, they took one look at Blaney's average finish and deemed him too inconsistent to be worthy of competing for a title.
Ever since then, he's finished eighth, seventh, fourth, sixth, third, and now first in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway after a thrilling charge from 13th to the front in the final laps. How's that for "inconsistent"?
Consistency is an illusion of luck, and Ryan Blaney is proving it
It's almost as if all it takes to be "consistent" is to avoid bad luck. And it's almost as if anybody who actually pays attention could've foreseen this hot streak coming from Blaney. After all, following Sonoma, his average finish in races he finished on the lead lap was still 7.25.
Luck regression is real, and in Blaney's case, it's come of the positive variety in the best possible way. He stole a pair of top 10 finishes at Dover Motor Speedway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway in races he finished better than he ran all day for a change, and in the four races since, he's had one of the fastest cars from start to finish.
Just like that, Blaney was able to catapult all the way to second place in the final regular season point standings. He's tied for third in top five finishes (10), tied for second in top 10 finishes (14), and has the fourth-most laps led.
Considering those numbers would be even better if not for his comical luck earlier in the year, and considering the Team Penske star's place among the elites in a club otherwise monopolized by Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, an excellent case can be made that he has been the best individual performer of 2025.
No one ever should have been questioning Blaney's status among the best in the business this season, but sadly, it took until his luck improved for anyone to start taking him seriously.
Let's use this as a lesson for the future: when a variable – in this case, average finish – can change without the driver himself doing anything to change it, then maybe we should stop treating it as the defining measurement of performance.
In conclusion, consistency is important, but just not in the way average finish watchers act like. It doesn't take any skill to simply avoid DNFs. Anybody can do that if they're lucky enough. What does take skill is running up front every single week, which is what Blaney has done in 2025. And as he's proving right now, when you repeatedly position yourself for success, eventually it will come.