Richmond Raceway presents a chance for Ryan Blaney to break a losing streak that started after his win at the regular-season-ending Daytona race in 2021.
A fast scan of his stats suggests Blaney is off to a good start to do just that in 2023. Despite a poor showing at COTA, where he failed to run any higher than 16th all race, Blaney has a season average finishing position of 12.8.
He’s tied with Kevin Harvick for fourth-best average finishing position among full-time drivers. Blaney finished second at Phoenix, where the new short track aeropackage debuted.
But he has not won. Before getting too worried by Blaney’s drought, remember that the season is only six races old. Two of those six races were superspeedway events, and a third was a road course where running through other cars has become the norm.