Ryan Blaney is not the big winner in Pocono

Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney earned his second win of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season on Sunday afternoon at Pocono Raceway. The Great American Getaway 400 presented by VISITPA was the second race won by the reigning series champion since mid-June.

But the driver of the No. 12 Ford was not the big winner of the 160-lap race at the three-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Tricky Triangle in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.

Since there can be more than 16 race winners in the 26-race regular season, winning a single race does not necessarily mean that a driver qualifies for the playoffs.

When there are more winners than playoff spots, the winners of multiple races are all set, but the tiebreaker among individual race winners is points. Sitting seventh in the points standings, Blaney was never in danger of missing the postseason after earning his first win of the year at Iowa Speedway.

More specifically, Daniel Suarez of the Trackhouse Racing Team, the winner of Atlanta Motor Speedway, is 17th in the point standings, and Austin Cindric of Team Penske, the winner of World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, is 19th.

But thanks to Blaney’s win at Pocono, there is now a very, very slim chance that there will be more than 16 winners before the end of the regular season.

For this to happen, a new winner would have to emerge in each of the final five races of the regular season at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Richmond Raceway, Michigan International Speedway, Daytona International Speedway and Darlington Raceway.

There were a number of non-winners who took part in Sunday’s race at Pocono, including polesitter Ty Gibbs and his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr. Stewart-Haas Racing’s Josh Berry and RFK Racing’s Chris Buescher also led several laps.

But as it turned out, the top seven riders in the final order had already won this year, and that was exactly what riders like Suarez and Cindric wanted to see after finishing in a relatively quiet 16th and 18th place respectively.

Should there be a repeat winner in the final five races of the regular season, those two drivers would officially qualify for the postseason. Neither has competed in the playoffs since 2022, when they both entered after their first career wins.

The next race on the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series schedule will be the last race on the calendar before the three-week break due to the Summer Olympics in Paris, France. The Brickyard 400 will be broadcast live on NBC from Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, July 21, beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET. Start a Try FuboTV for free now and don’t miss it!