by Patrick Zier | Oct 18, 2026 |
Ryan Blaney is the guy. A lot of people think Joey Logano is Ford’s ace, but Ryan Blaney is the guy. If anybody’s going to steal this Cup championship from red-hot Kyle Larson or one of Toyota’s big three, Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe, then Blaney has the best chance. And if Blaney is going to make a move, now is the time.
While Larson has taken charge since the chase races began with Darlington’s Southern 500, even he remains cautious because he knows while he has a solid lead, it is not insurmountable although neither Blaney nor Logano is regarded as one of his major threats.
But the final four races of the season, which will determine the outcome, play to Ford’s – and Blaney’s strengths. Two of them, today’s race at Phoenix and another at Martinsville, are on short tracks. And while we haven’t had a short track race since Iowa on Aug. 9th, Blaney and Logano have dominated on the smaller tracks.
Using the Old Guy Sport competition index to measure performance. Blaney has scored 254 points and Logano 235 on the short tracks. Next best among the chase drivers is Christopher Bell with 159. Throw is Talladega, which is totally unpredictable, and if Blaney in particular continues his short track run and gets a break at Talladega, Ford could be ready to rumble at Homestead, the series finale.
Right now, Blaney is fifth in the chase standings, 85 points behind Larson, with Logano sixth, 92 points back. But as Larson himself has pointed out, one or two good runs can change things in a hurry. One problem that hangs over the Fords is the fact that they have the fast Toyotas, Hamlin, Bell and Briscoe, ahead of them as well as Larson.
Still, if past performance is any kind of indicator, Blaney might be the guy to watch. Looking at results in the last four short track races and using the OGS competition index as a guide, Blaney is the only driver to score points in all four of them.
At Iowa, Blaney finished third and led the most laps under green. At Richmond, he led the third most laps under green in a race won by Logano. At New Hampshire, Blaney won the race and again led the most laps under green. And at Bristol he also led the most laps under green. So, Blaney has dominated three out of the last four short track races and scored two top five finishes.
And he got a boost from his third place finish at Charlotte. Blaney and Ford have struggled on the intermediate tracks, and the final chase race will be at Homestead. In the first 12 intermediate races of the season, Blaney scored 69 points on the OGS competition index. He has 42 in the last three.
“Overall, really proud of our day after my mistake, like I said, and really proud of the last three weeks. The places we’ve really needed to get better at, the mile-and-a-halves, we’ve been able to do that,” Blaney told NASCAR’s website. “Three solid finishes. Sticking in there. Just got to keep going to work.
“Myself and this whole group, we go into every weekend thinking we can win,” Blaney said. “And this group has been awesome to work with. I love my guys. Phoenix (a short track) has been good to us in the past. I don’t know what’s going to happen at Talladega, no one does. But then we’ve got Martinsville (another short track) and then Miami (Homestead, another intermediate.)
“The best thing we can do is one race at a time, just try to go do our job the best that we can, and hopefully if we do that we can find victory lane a couple more times,” Blaney commented. Although he has gotten more credit recently, he won the NASCAR championship in 2023, Blaney is still NASCAR’s most unappreciated driver. He does more with less than any driver on an elite team.
Maybe, if he wins another championship, people will finally figure that out.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Phoenix: 1-Ryan Blaney, 2-Joey Logano, 3-Christopher Bell. Last year’s winner at Phoenix: Blaney. Top five at Phoenix last year: 1-Blaney, 2-Brad Keselowski, 3-Kyle Larson, 4-Logano, 5-Kyle Busch.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Charlotte picks: 1-Larson, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Bell. Charlotte winner: Chase Briscoe. OGS season record: 13-14.
OGS competition index after 27 races: 1-Hamlin 621 points, 2-Larson 541, 3-Bell 524, 4-Briscoe 476, 5-Tyler Reddick 413, 6-Blaney 372, 7-Ty Gibbs 354, 8-Logano 308, 9-Shane van Gisbergen 226, 10-Chase Elliott 192.
OGS competition index on short tracks (tracks most like Phoenix): 1-Blaney 254 points, 2-Logano 235, 3-Gibbs 188, 4-Bell 159, 5-Hamlin 146, 6-Larson 140, 7-Briscoe 101, 8-Elliott 72, 9-Josh Berry 61, 9-Bubba Wallace 49, 10-Carson Hocevar 33.
by Patrick Zier | Oct 16, 2026 |
South Florida’s Brian Hartline is walking a tightrope and the question is whether or not he can get to the other side. Halfway through the season, two straight conference losses have effectively eliminated the Bulls from any shot at an American Conference championship and dampened the enthusiasm Hartline did nothing to discourage when he was hired to replace Alex Golesh.
“There’s been some success here over the last couple years, but nowhere near where it should be,” Hartline told On3’s Pete Nakos prior to the season. “The expectation should be to win – the floor here should be a constant chase for the American Conference championship.” It was a clear shot at Golesh, who earlier had said there was no way USF could ever win a national title.
So if there were high expectations for this program, Hartline put them out there. And there was no reason not to believe. Hartline, who had been the offensive coordinator at Ohio State, was considered an outstanding hire. He brought in what was generally considered the top transfer class in the Group of 6. His quarterback, Michael Van Buren, had been a starter in the SEC and ranked among the best signal callers in the portal.
With a new stadium set to open in 2027, new facilities springing up left and right and Hartline expected to take the football program to new heights, the USF community was almost giddy. Change was in the wind and USF would – finally – take its rightful place in the world of college athletics.
Lost in all of this was the fact that this was not a rebuild. Golesh had already brought the Bulls back to respectability. In the three years prior to Golesh’s arrival, USF compiled records of 1-8 in 2020, 2-10 in 2021 and 1-11 in 2022. In 2023 and ’24 they were 7-6 and they were 9-4 in 2025. They made bowl games all three years.
It was the largest turnaround in USF history and Golesh’s winning percentage, 59 percent, was the second best ever at the school, topped only by USF’s first coach, Jim Leavitt, who won 63 percent of his games over a 10-year span. Golesh’s offenses were particularly effective. In 2025, USF ranked third in the country in total offense, averaging 488.7 yards per game, and fifth in scoring with a 40.8 points per game average.
Hartline installed a more traditional system that slowed the offensive pace and has struggled to maintain consistency, so USF is starting over again. Currently, USF is 88th in the country in scoring at 26.2 points per game and 111th in total offense, averaging 334.8 yards per game.
And Hartline has backed away from his earlier comments about competing for a conference championship every year and is now urging patience. His main concern is developing a new culture and process, which, he says, will eventually make the Bulls competitive.
“We’ve got to understand that you win with fundamentals, not play calls, and so we’ve got to make sure we’re spending enough time on that as a team,” Hartline said after the UTSA loss according to USF’s football website. “In the end, we are building. As much as I hate saying that. We are getting better, it’s just not good enough,” Hartline declared.
“And so as a group, we have to make sure we are continuing to put in the work to give ourselves a chance. I’m looking forward to the day when the coin turns,” Hartline continued. “I don’t think it’s necessarily guys can or can’t do things, but, you know, we have routine plays we have to make. We have to hit them.
“The pass game’s got to continue to improve, be more consistent instead of so flashy. But we’ll keep putting the work in. Again, the work’s been put in throughout the week, ” Hartline emphasized. “That’s the biggest thing I’m most pleased with. I just wish the guys could reap the benefits of what that feels like consistently on game day.
“That being said, the season’s halfway over and I’m looking forward to what we can do the second half. It’s pretty black and white,” Hartline said. “Ultimately we still have goals we’re chasing and if we have a bunch of guys that are willing to cash in after six games, then we have the wrong guys.
“We need to keep putting in the work. We know the work doesn’t guarantee us anything, but that increases the odds of reaching our goal. Without it, we have no shot,” Hartline declared. “These guys have a lot of goals, both personally and as a team, and it all starts with how we practice on Sunday and how we practice on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. You rarely get better on game day, you get better throughout the week.
“So we have to get better,” Hartline stressed. “And we don’t have time to worry about past results. They stink, don’t get me wrong, but the focus is on getting better.” And the Bulls do indeed have to get better. The meat of their schedule is still ahead, starting with a much improved UAB team after Kent State.
Although it’s not likely, if the Bulls don’t solidify their offense and stop the defensive lapses in critical situations, they might lose every game after Kent State. Wins over Kent State and UAB would give them confidence, because they need proof of concept. It’s all well and good to talk about improvement, but if you don’t see it on the scoreboard, you begin to wonder if what you’re doing will really work. And if that happens, Hartline could slip off that tightrope before he gets to the other side.
by Patrick Zier | Oct 10, 2026 |
You sometimes get the impression that Chase Briscoe feels the need to prove he truly belongs at Joe Gibbs Racing. Briscoe, who somewhat surprisingly is starting to emerge as Toyota’s best bet to win a championship, came over to JGR last year after the collapse of Stewart-Haas.
And immediately, he understood he had to change his mindset. As Stewart-Haas crumbled, there were no expectations to win, only worries about where you were going to wind up when the end finally came. Because of that, for a number of years prior to its shutdown S-H had not been competitive. If you were a driver, you got as much out of the car as you could knowing the best you could hope for was a mediocre finish.
Not so at JGR. Everyone there goes into each race confident any of its cars can win every time out. That put pressure on Briscoe to perform at the same level, to prove he belonged. He had to get used to cars capable of doing anything he wanted them to do, of being competitive in any race.
In his first year with JGR and using the Old Guy Sport competition index to measure his performance against both the other three JGR cars and the rest of the field, Briscoe outran every Toyota on the track except his JGR teammate, Denny Hamlin, and Chevy’s Kyle Larson. The OGS competition index is used because it is a better indication of competitiveness than the NASCAR point system, which rewards finishing races, not competing in them.
While he has slipped a bit this year; Hamlin, Larson and JGR teammate Christopher Bell are currently ahead of him in the OGS standings as the season nears its end, he is still running well. And as the other Toyotas have faltered in their chase for the championship, it is Briscoe who has picked up the flag.
Last week’s race at Las Vegas is a perfect example. Hamlin, who has struggled some of late, spun out all by himself coming out of a corner and damaged his front splitter, effectively taking him out of contention. Bell lost his power steering, and couldn’t overcome that. And Ty Gibbs, the fourth JGR entry, was penalized for speeding on pit road.
Briscoe dominated the race and held off the red-hot Larson to get the win. This after a fourth place finish at Kansas, a race he felt he should have won. Again, using the OGS competition index as a guide, Briscoe has scored 94 points in the last two events, far more than any other Toyota (Hamlin is next with 37) and more than anybody but Larson, who continues to play King Kong against the field. Larson had 115 points.
But talking about the win, Briscoe’s insecurity appeared to come through. “I put pressure on myself after last week (Kansas),” he said according to NASCAR.com’s website. “You don’t want your guys to lose confidence in you. I felt like after last week; I drove to the lead and you lose the race with six to go.
“I don’t really feel like I made a mistake per se last week,” he continued. “I mean, I was just really loose, and I could have done a better job of defending Larson, but still, you don’t want it to be two weeks in a row where you lose a race in the last five to 10 laps. I just feel like your confidence from the team guys, in their driver, can go away really quickly.”
This is in sharp contrast to someone like Hamlin, who definitely feels he has a different rapport with his team and considers mistakes, both by the driver and the team, to simply be part of racing. “Just trying to get back the track position we lost and got up in the marbles (little balls of rubber that come off the tires as they wear) and spun out,” Hamlin told NBCsports.com.
“There’s nothing you can do now postrace,” Hamlin added. “Just got to go on to the next race and see if we can find a way to win. Charlotte (on deck Sunday) should be good for us but today certainly didn’t live up to what we expected.”
Like Hamlin, Bell just kind of shrugged off the power steering issue even though it impacted him more because he’s still recovering from a broken wrist suffered at Michigan in June. “My wrist is fine,” he said, again according to NBCsports.com. “My hands are a little bit shaky and tingly but I’m going to be okay.
“Disappointing not to be able to capitalize on a day like today when other guys had issues. It looked like an opportunity to make up some points and it didn’t happen. Just going to go out there and race. We’ve got five more (races) left and I’m going to try and win a couple.”
But Bell didn’t see the need for his crew to explain what went wrong and hasn’t lost any confidence in them because the power steering went out. It’s on to the next race. And as time goes by, Briscoe will settle in at JGR. He’s in a position he’s never been in before, but he can handle it. Gibbs wouldn’t have hired him if he couldn’t.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Charlotte: 1-Kyle Larson, 2-Denny Hamlin, 3-Christopher Bell. Last year’s winner at Charlotte: Not applicable, last year’s race at Charlotte was run on the road course. This year, it is on the oval.
Top five at Charlotte last year: Again, not applicable.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport Las Vegas picks: 1-Hamlin, 2-Larson, 3-Bell. Las Vegas winner: Chase Briscoe. OGS season record: 13-13.
OGS competition index top 10 after 26 races: 1-Hamlin 611 points, 2-Larson 526, 3-Bell 467, 4-Briscoe 415, 5-Tyler Reddick 413, 6-Ty Gibbs 354, 7-Ryan Blaney 342, 8-Joey Logano 308, 9-Shane van Gisbergen 226, 10-Chase Elliott 192.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (Tracks most like Charlotte): 1-Hamlin 465 points, 2-Larson 328, 3-Reddick 301, 4-Bell 268, 5-Briscoe 250, 6-Elliott 120, 7-William Byron 119, 8-Blaney 81, 9-Alex Bowman 80, 10-Austin Cindric 79.
