November 3, 2025

Team Penske's Ryan Blaney was one of the top performers in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix Raceway. Blaney began the race from the fifth position, and although he had a slow start by dropping back a few positions early, his car had excellent speed on longer green flag runs. This showed in the first stage as he went from eighth to second by the end of the stage, running just behind William Byron for the stage win. Blaney continued to run inside the top five through most of the rest of the race, finishing second at the end of the second stage to Denny Hamlin. At times, he was the fastest driver on the track in the final stage and was the only one to keep up with Byron and Hamlin, the two most dominant drivers of the race. The No. 12 Ford driver was set to finish in third until Byron hit the wall with two laps to go with a flat tire. On the final pit stop of the race, Blaney took two tires and restarted in fourth. Then, on the final restart of the race, Blaney went on to fight for the win and took it away from Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson. This victory was Blaney's fourth of the season and first of his Cup career at Phoenix, but he did not win the title as he was not one of the four championship drivers. The Penske driver finished sixth in the final driver standings for the 2025 season. --Sean Engel - RotoBaller
Source: NASCAR.com