Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. Were Exposed by Avoidable Blunders at Homestead
Ryan Blaney and Martin Truex Jr. have had two of the best seasons of their 2022 NASCAR Cup Series campaigns.
But the way they both lost Sunday's race at Homestead-Miami Speedway was a prime example of why their seasons would be forgotten rather than celebrated.
Blaney is still in the running to win the 2022 Cup Series championship with two races left in the season and in many ways his best campaign ever.
He is a top-five run shy of his career-high 11 runs, which he has reached in each of the last three years.
He has already achieved his career best score in qualifying with three pole awards.
Blaney has led over 500 laps for only the third time in his seven full-time Cup Series seasons,
and is the seventh-most equal in his 15 top-10 series. Blaney actually won one race this year, except it was
an All-Star exhibition race at Texas Motor Speedway, so it didn't count towards his points position.
However, it was his points total that propelled him to the NASCAR playoffs for a sixth straight season.
He was the only driver without a regular season win to make the playoffs this season,
but accumulated the third-most points of any driver through the 26-event regular season, behind only Chase Elliott and Joey Logano.
Truex, meanwhile, was well behind Blaney during the regular season as other potential drivers to reach the postseason without a win.
Kurt Busch's early end of his season due to a head injury opened up an additional playoff spot, with 14 other winners locked in the
playoffs until the series visited Daytona International Speedway for the finale of the regular season.
Austin Dillon won that race to jump into the playoffs, and an eighth-place result for the Truex was not enough to get them into the post-season,
although they were over 200 points over Eric Jones as the next closest winning driver. had a benefit.
FOR MORE
WEBSTORIES