In the past few seasons, no NASCAR Cup Series team has exploited the playoff format like Team Penske.
The organization has won all three titles of the Next Gen era thus far, two with Joey Logano in 2022 and 2024 and one with Ryan Blaney in 2023. In all three of those seasons, the title-winning driver's stats didn't exactly jump off the page as championship-caliber, because Penske lacked speed until suddenly catching fire at the right time.
This season, that has changed, and Blaney has been among the front-runners each and every week. The only problem is his luck would make Wile E. Coyote blush, with eight finishes of 28th or worse through 20 races.
Those finishes have been due to two blown engines, one flat tire, and five crashes in which he was an innocent victim, including two separate incidents on Sunday in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway.
Ryan Blaney's 2025 season highlights the playoff format's greatest unintentional perk
In the season-long standings, Blaney ranks seventh, 123 points behind leader William Byron. Though not completely insurmountable, it would require him (and his luck) to be nearly perfect to climb back into title contention if the playoffs didn't exist.
That's incredibly unfair for a driver who, in the 12 races in which he hasn't had his day ruined by some misfortune beyond his control, has seven top five finishes and an average finish of 6.2.
No worries though, because due to the playoffs, he is set to be back on equal footing with the rest of the field's top drivers come September. Despite what many would have you believe, this is a good thing, actually.
Avoiding bad finishes requires marginal skill at best, and it certainly shouldn't outweigh the reward of competing for wins on a consistent basis, as Blaney has done this season.
Of course, it's hard to give the playoffs too much credit when they were not designed for this purpose. They were designed so that NASCAR can end every season with a Game 7 moment, regardless of whether or not the champion is the driver who deserves the title the most. But sometimes, bad ideas can accidentally lead to positive outcomes.
Several Cup Series seasons since the implementation of the playoffs have resulted in champions who were indeed the best performers all year, but wouldn't have won the title under the full-season format simply because they weren't as lucky as other drivers.
Blaney this season would fit that bill. Nobody has stood out above the rest as the clear-cut class of the field, and if you can ignore the eyesore of his wildly misrepresentative 18.5 average finish, his argument is as good as anyone's.
Let's put it this way: in the eight races he's finished poorly through no fault of his own, the Team Penske star's average result is 35.25. With his points deficit sitting at 123 markers, he would be leading the standings if he scored 15.4 more points, meaning finishing barely 20th, in each of those events. That's a bar Blaney could walk over in his sleep with normal luck.
Anyone who actually watches the races as opposed to only looking at box scores would agree Blaney's performance this year is worthy of competing for a championship. Thankfully, he'll still have as good of an opportunity as anyone to capture his second Cup Series title in a few months.