Jeff Burton Reminds Ryan Blaney About “Price to Be Paid for the Failures” After Nashville Victory

Ex-NASCAR racer Jeff Burton has given a big warning to Ryan Blaney over his lack of consistency in the 2025 Cup season.

Jeff Burton Reminds Ryan Blaney About “Price to Be Paid for the Failures” After Nashville Victory

Jeff Burton and Ryan Blaney (Via NASCAR and IMAGO)

2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion Ryan Blaney got back to winning ways with his impressive run last Sunday at Nashville Superspeedway. He completed Team Penske Racing’s win streak, as now all three of their drivers, Joey Logano and Austin Cindric, are in the playoff with the race victories. Of the three Blaney has been the most inconsistent, something uncharacteristic of the No:12 Ford racer.

Ryan Blaney made a career and became champion taking advantage of his consistency, but in 2025 he had five DNFs from 14 races. He has either been finishing inside the top 5 or had the worse finish of the race week, as he hasn’t had a normal top 15 finishing the top driver usually has on their bad days. Ex-racer Jeff Burton sees a big issue with this pattern.

The former Richard Childress Racing driver on his appearance in the Inside the Race show pointed out that Blaney might be forced to pay the price for failures to finish races strong consistently. He believes this will result in the lack points earned now will come back to harm them once the playoff starts, where a single point can decide fortunes.

There is a price to be paid for the failures. As the playoffs get going, we’ve seen the lack of those points being where you need them in the playoffs, they come back and bite you.

Jeff Burton said via NASCAR Inside the Race on YouTube.

He further talked about the topic he asserted that winning one race in the regular season doesn’t guarantee anything once the playoffs starts and as every time the championship is decided by consistency in the right time. There is no better example for this, as Blaney won his titles by becoming consistently clutch in the right time of the playoffs.

You miss (advancing to the next round in the playoffs) around by one or two points, so don’t dismiss by any means. Just because they won this race that it doesn’t matter, because it does matter what you do in the regular season, its 100 percent matters.

Jeff Burton added.

Ryan Blaney shares his thoughts on road course struggles

One of the biggest issues Ryan Blaney is facing in is championship chase, as Burton warns, is his road course racing performance. He hasn’t been the best when it comes to track where he has to turn both left and right, especially is the Next-Gen era.

Ryan Blaney (via Imagn)
Ryan Blaney (via Imagn)

Talking about it, the No:12 Ford driver has shared his thoughts on this recently. He admitted that he is average at best when it comes to road courses and he is working hard to overcome these issues and produce consistent runs in these tracks.

Yeah, I’m not the best road course racer. I’m average at the best, I work really hard on it. Like trying to figure out where I can be better and compare myself to the good guys. I’m working hard on it, I mean that’s the biggest thing, I need to get better at road courses.

Ryan Blaney said.

He has Austin Cindric at Penske from whom he can learn a lot about road course arcing, despite the No:2 Ford driver being much younger. The 2022 Daytona 500 winner has great sports car racing experiment and knowns how to get the best out his car in these situations.

Another racer he can approach for support is his best friend and 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace. The TRD driver was pretty bad at RC tracks when he joined the team, but within the last two years he has become a consistent top 15 racer in these events, mainly due to his hard work. It would be interesting to see what Blaney would do and how he will evolve in these tracks.

Also Read: Kevin Harvick Declares He “Truly Believes” Corey Heim Will Be Soon a Cup Series Winner