As the regular season ends, Ryan Blaney's stretch is his strongest performance so far this season. But his best friend Chase Elliott has suffered the worst dip.Blaney's best three-race average finish of the 2025 season stands at 5.7 after a seventh, fourth and sixth place finish at the last three NASCAR Cup races (Indianapolis, Iowa and Watkins Glen).However, Elliott is in the middle of his season's single-worst three-race stretch with only two races left in the regular season. After a 13th-place finish at the Brickyard 400, he has only fallen behind and managed a 14th and 26th position at Iowa and Watkins Glen, respectively. The No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports driver's average finish sits at 17.7 from the last three races.Blaney started Sunday's Go Bowling at The Glen strong by winning the Busch Light Pole Award and earned his second pole of the season. He led 35 laps and ultimately finished sixth. Meanwhile, Elliott was met with a rough weekend. His impressive streak of 26 consecutive top-20 finishes, dating back to Homestead-Miami 2024, came to an end when he finished 26th at Watkins Glen.Chase Elliott started the race from 20th place but slipped six places behind by the end of the 90-lap race.Chase Elliott and No. 9 team looking for wins with two regular-season races remainingChase Elliott, who won the 2025 Quaker State 400 at Atlanta, is still second on the Cup points standings behind leader and Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron. He is 39 points ahead of Denny Hamlin, who leads Cup drivers in the number of wins.Elliott showed strong consistency and pace through the first 23 events with 12 top-10 and seven top-five finishes. The 29-year-old completed all but one lap in the first 23 races and led the regular-season points standings heading into Indianapolis, four points clear of William Byron. His crew chief Alan Gustafson talked about winning opportunities for wins in the final regular-season races last week."We obviously want to win the regular season, but more importantly than that, we want to win some races," Gustafson said (via HendrickMotorsports.com)."Richmond is a race that, same thing, I like racing there. It's a lot of fun. I'm excited to get there and we've been working on some new things, so we would like to try to incorporate that at Richmond and try to win that race. And Daytona, we were really good in February. That's as good as we've been down there in a while," he added.The NASCAR Cup Series will head to Richmond Raceway for the 25th race of the year this Sunday (August 16). Chase Elliott has three top-10 finishes in his last four starts at the 0.75-mile short track in Virginia.