Much was asked of Ryan Blaney, Jonathan Hassler and the Penske No. 12 team this weekend at Martinsville Speedway and all they did was validate why they are the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champions.
A week after suffering what could only be described as a gut punch defeat at Homestead-Miami Speedway — a race they needed to win and were leading at the white flag before giving it up to Tyler Reddick — they once again faced a must-win scenario.
Clearly stated, they faced two weeks in a row where nothing less than winning one of them would end their championship defense a week early and answered the call at Martinsville for the second consecutive year.
“That’s the way this team operates,” said Blaney after the race. “That’s why I’m really proud to be a part of this group. They just understand the next job, what’s the next task, what do we have to do next, then we go do it, or at least give our best effort into doing it. That’s all I can ask for from a team.”
Hassler feels the same about the resolve from his driver, especially given how easy it would be to let the dejection of Homestead carry over into Martinsville, but it never did.
“I think the favorite thing that I’ve seen out of him, he’s quick to move on to the next thing that we need to tackle,” Hassler said. “We obviously had our struggles at Homestead. I think by the time we got to the plane, honestly, after the race at Homestead, he was focused on Martinsville.
“We talked about it a little bit on Monday. Similar, this week on Saturday we didn’t qualify quite as well as we wanted to. We talked about qualifying for about 30 seconds and moved on to do what he needed to do to have the best chance to win the race.”
And what he needed to do was deliver a herculean performance, against several odds, to win that race.
Blaney had just cracked the top-five with 60 laps to go but temperatures had dropped and track position became increasingly important. This current iteration of Martinsville is the hardest passing has ever been and then you add the stakes of Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott ahead both needing to win to advance too.
Blaney methodically picked them off.
It was a clinic from the defending champion.
“I’ll be honest with you, that’s the most tired I’ve been after a race in a long time,” Blaney said. “My God, I was tired. I still am. It’s the most worn out I’ve been, for sure. …
“I laid the bumper to more guys than I would have liked tonight. I don’t really do that. That’s not my MO. I kind of had to do it in certain moments. I don’t think anything was super egregious. I wasn’t ever going to lay the bumper to (Elliott) especially for the lead. It was nice we were able to race without contact there.
“Yeah, a couple guys I just kind of had to go. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess fight and determination. Yeah, the drive was great. How much time we made up is awesome. You can make up that time when your car is really good. We got our car really good. Makes me look like a hero. At the same time Jonathan and those guys did an awesome job of getting us where we needed to be. Definitely a joint effort.”
Again, they are the champions.
“I think just grit, knowing where we restarted, knowing we didn’t really have a ton of laps to get there, having the car to do it,” Blaney said. “This 12 group is just dogs, man. We’ve dealt with a lot of adversity through the year, ups and downs, getting wrecked, getting caught up in BS that’s not our fault.
“Everyone kind of overlooks this group, to be honest with you, especially in the Playoffs. We’ll have a good week, then we’ll get wrecked the next week, then a decent week. The ups and downs. This team has been fantastic all year. Just hasn’t been the smoothest of years.
“Yeah, it’s cool to go to battle with them every week. Looking forward to going to battle again with them next week.”
Next week, where once again, in all likelihood, they faced must-win odds. With that said, so do William Byron, Tyler Reddick and Joey Logano, the latter whom is their Penske teammate and 2022 champion from the Phoenix finale.
“I’d say on the 12 team, we’ve done very minor preparations for Phoenix,” Blaney said. “I would say probably 20 percent of the prep that we’ll do.
“But company-wide with the 22 getting the win, our whole company has done a lot of work to get prepared for Phoenix and make sure that we’re bringing the best stuff that we can do. We’ll definitely dive into that.”
After this past week, and after last season, do you think the remaining 80 percent of the work fazes Blaney and Company?
“Those guys are built on long nights,” Blaney said. “They’re ready. They’ll be down for it. They’re ready to go. Yeah, I mean, same way last year. It turned out pretty good for us. See if we can do it again.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.