Ryan Blaney said on Wednesday night that he felt that he was close to a win. He’s had a front row seat this season to witness his two Team Penske teammates combine to win four races this year, two a piece, while he himself was shutout. Blaney, last won at Talladega last October.

“Very close,” Blaney said on how close he is to winning. “I mean, I thought it was going to be tonight (Wednesday In Martinsville). You keep bringing speed like this every weekend, eventually you’re going to find a little bit more and be able to win the race.

“We just got to keep doing what we’ve been doing. I think it’s going to come soon, we just got to keep working really hard.”

It nearly happened again on Sunday night at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. Blaney, brought his No. 12 Ford home third for his fifth top four finish in his last six starts on the season.

“When we came off pit road after that last green flag stop we were a ways behind those two guys and we made up a lot of ground, tons of ground on them, and just got to them and everyone is running the wall,” Blaney said after scoring his first top 10 finish of his career at Homestead.  “You just get tight, especially in (Turns) 3 and 4.  (Turns) 1 and 2 there are multiple lanes, but three and four if you weren’t on the fence when you got 15 laps on your stuff, you were just tight and gonna hit the fence, so that made it hard for us to kind of go once we got there. 

“(Tyler Reddick) was the same way with me.  He kind of got there and stalled too, but I’m proud of the group.  We had really good short run speed early in the race and I thought by the end we had really good long run speed, so we crossed over which is a good effort by the Jack Links team.”

Yes, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano have multiple trips to victory lane this season, but I feel Blaney is the top Penske car in the speed department.

Blaney, should have started the season off with a top two finish in each of the first three races. A late race caution in Vegas and a tire problem at the end of Fontana derailed that.

If you take those finishes with the one at Bristol to where he led 60 laps and crashed while leading, Blaney could easily have nine top four finishes in 12 starts on the season.