Ryan Blaney elaborates on NASCAR's perceived downfall as a sport: "It grinds my gears"

In a recent podcast appearance, Ryan Blaney stated his disagreement with the widely held belief among the NASCAR fraternity that the sport has declined in the recent past.

The Team Penske driver recently appeared on former NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace's popular podcast, The Kenny Wallace Show, where he elaborated on his thoughts about the popularity of stock car racing. Expressing his annoyance with claims about the sport's decline, Blaney said:

"It grinds my gears a little bit when people just say 'Oh, the sport's just going downhill.' Like, what are you talking about? It's going uphill. It's rapidly going uphill, and in the negative world that we live in, I guess you're going to have that all the time. I think they're doing a great job and I feel like that's NASCAR's job. You have to push your athletes. I think that's any league or association."

2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion Blaney seemed to agree with the governing body's approach of keeping the drivers and teams on their toes by continuously tweaking the rules package, as well as technical aspects of the car. This helps promote a culture that can reward teams and drivers willing to go the extra mile, especially in terms of their driving, given the level of parity seen in the sport currently.

The governing body's recently finalized TV deal also seems to be a step in the right direction, with a focus on streaming on several new platforms in the future of NASCAR.

Ryan Blaney looks back at the initial days of his NASCAR journey

Coming from a family steeped in racing history, Ryan Blaney had a set path to take to reach the heights he has today. Blaney elaborated on why he didn't participate in a lot of dirt-track racing, unlike many Cup Series drivers in the sport currently.

In a conversation with Kenny Wallace on the former driver's podcast, Blaney said:

"I did very little dirt. I’ve run a dirt modified a couple of times, I ran a dirt sprint car a couple of times but I haven’t sat behind the wheel of a sprint car in over 10 years. By the time I was old enough to start racing, Dad was in the Cup side and we were in North Carolina. Especially then, there weren’t a lot of dirt options around."

Watch Ryan Blaney defend his championship this year as the 2024 season kicks off with the Daytona 500 next month.