Ryan Blaney has had speed in his No. 12 Ford lately, he just hasn’t been the one celebrating in victory lane when the NASCAR Cup Series races were all said and done. That’s why I considered him a threat in the playoffs this fall, but not quite a championship favorite.

Now that he’s finally gotten over the proverbial hump in terms of finding a victory, I think it’s time we start taking Blaney seriously.

Heading last weekend’s at the Talladega Superspeedway, Blaney had five top four finishes in his last six starts on the season. He was fourth a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta, runner-up the Wednesday night after at Martinsville and third two Sunday’s ago in Homestead.

More: Saturday’s Pocono Race Preview

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Throw in a second place finish in the season opener at Daytona and what should have been two more runner-up results in consecutive weeks to follow, and you get a driver that arguably is the best to not have won a race in 2020 and one that could very well have the most speed in his car.

So, it was fitting that with how this season has gone for him, he won a race at the end in the most unpredictable race of the season.

He kept talking lately how close he was. Now, he ended a 17 race winless drought in winning Monday’s rain delayed GEICO 500.

“The whole year really, but the past month and a half has been really good for us,” Blaney said after scoring his fourth win of his career. “We’ve had some really good runs.  We’ve had really fast cars, had a chance to win I feel like every race the last month and a half.  It just really hasn’t fallen our way.  We just haven’t been in the right place at the right time or not been quite fast enough.

“Coming here, you just don’t really know your outcome.  You don’t really know how things are going to be.  You can’t work on your car really too much to get better throughout the race.  You can change a little bit, get better, but you don’t control your destiny a whole lot like other racetracks.

“It is a little funny.  We’ve been knocking on the door all year, and it just happened to be here.  We kept ourselves in contention all day.  Todd did a great job with strategy calls all day.  It was really good.  We worked with our teammates, me, Brad, Joey and Matt all day.  We worked great together.  We couldn’t find each other at the end.  That’s usually how that goes.

“Nice to finally break through, get the first one of the year.  Hopefully this opens the floodgates here and we can get on a roll.  This team has been awesome.  They’ve been so much fun to work with all year.”

Blaney, now has three top two finishes in his last three superspeedway starts. Is he becoming the best in this discipline of tracks?

“You’re always learning, right?  This package was a little bit different than the one we had in Daytona, or last year even.  Especially at these places, a big notebook.  You’re constantly remembering things, I should have done this here, this here.  This worked pretty decent.  You’re always kind of remembering that.

“Like I said, everything happens so fast, you have to make a decision in a split second.  If you wait a split second too long, it’s too late.  Just have to kind of go with your gut.  Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

“I’ve been on the wrong end of it where it doesn’t work out.  Exactly like Daytona, it was the wrong move I made that put us in a particularly weird spot.  That happened.  So you learn from those things, learn to maybe not put yourself in those positions again.

“It’s easy to plan those things out and think of them ahead of times, but it’s sometimes hard to react to them.  Our speedway program is fast.  We have fast cars.  Just good to be with good teammates that will help you go.

“A lot of it’s just what line goes, what line moves.  If you have a fast enough car, you can kind of make a line move.  That was something we had today.

“Yeah, just experience.  Honestly some of it is just things working out for you.  Three races before, the three speedway races before we won Talladega last year, we got involved in someone’s mess.  That’s just part of it.  It’s just part experience, learning, understanding, then right breaks, getting a little bit of luck at the end to make it to the end of these things.”

Now, it’s to Pocono, a place that was the site of Blaney’s first career Cup Series victory. He’s only finished outside of the top 12 at Pocono just once and will have a good starting position for Saturday’s race to win again.

Right now, I think this is Blaney’s championship to lose if they keep doing this and he could easily rattle off several more victories over the coming weeks.