Ryan Blaney has won 17 NASCAR Cup Series races but the Team Penske driver is working to change his approach to racing, and hoping it leads to more success down the road.
The Team Penske driver is striving to improve his mental fitness for the 2026 racing season. It’s part of his larger reflection on last season and how the entire No. 12 Ford Mustang team can make positive gains. “I’ve always just tried to be better every week and every year and just try to learn,” Blaney told Newsweek.
Between seasons, the team continues the work, Blaney explained saying, “In the winter, I always just try to make my whole group sit down and be like, ‘Alright, what did we do poorly? How do we improve that? What did we do well, and how do we build off of that?’ There’s always things you can do better, no matter how successful or unsuccessful you were.”
In season, his team has learned how to focus their energy by taking one week and race result at a time. “The biggest lesson we learned, that I thought we did very well, was forgetting bad weeks and [moving] on,” he said. “How do we address it? How do we move past it [and] not stew over things? I think it’s easy to get in your head and stew over stuff you do wrong, but it’s important to move on from them.”
Blaney’s routine helps him keep this mental exercise going.
“I try to get all my previous race stuff done either Sunday night or, like, Monday by lunch, and then it’s like, ‘Alright, what’s next?’,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing, turning the page… but I have to get it all done then. Because then if you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna draw it out till Monday night or Tuesday,’ then you’re not fully focused on the next week. I’ve got to get all my stuff done right away.”
Turning the page on races doesn’t mean veering from goals, even in the lead up to the 2026 NASCAR season. “The main goal is getting them in victory lane. But the funny part about wintertime, I think it’s [true] in any sport when you have an offseason… How is the work that you’re gonna do compare to [the work done by] everybody else? Is the work that you’ve done gonna pay off? It’s always a fun, challenging thing for me. You hope you worked hard enough and I think we have. I expect big things from us, and I expect to contend. That’s all you can ask for, is to be in contention.”
But, as much as auto racing is a team sport, Blaney is conscious of the focus that is put on drivers and their leadership in the garage. “I think it’s really important how you go about yourself and how you conduct yourself. And, obviously winning fixes everything,” he said. “I feel like we learn more in the hard times – you learn more about yourself and about your team as a collective in the down times. How do we get over the hump? How mentally strong are we to move on?”
Blaney is one of many auto racing athletes to speak out about mental fitness lately. In January, Formula 1 driver Max Verstappen told Newsweek what would make him a happier driver.
