Though a Chevy and a Toyota seemed a threat at Nashville Superspeedway on June 1st, 2025, none of them could hold a candle to Ryan Blaney. The No. 12 NASCAR Ford Mustang Dark Horse led a race-high 139 0f 300 laps, easily fending off his competitors as he put on a dominating show.
Denny Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 Toyota TRD Camry, claimed the Stage 1 win, while Blaney, who started 15th, marched steadily forward. By the time the green-checkered flag fell on Stage 2, Blaney’s No. 12 NASCAR Ford showed the way, unplagued by the horrible luck that seems to have stymied him all throughout the 2025 season.
Blaney held onto that top spot in the closing laps, even as the No. 77 Chevy of Carson Hocevar locked him in his sights. When the checkers finally dropped, Blaney was well shut of Hocevar, winning by 2.830 seconds over the runner-up Chevy.
“I never gave up hope. That’s for sure,: Blaney said. “We’ve had adversity, and this hasn’t really been a good year for us in terms of good fortune, but the 12-boys are awesome. They stick with it no matter how it goes.”
He added, “Just been pretty rocky this year and had a lot of misfortune and a lot of down times, just crappy things happening to us, and it’s like, man, what do we got to do to just finish these races or close one out and just kind of things go our way… finally nothing crazy happened and we were able to just run our own race and bring the speed and execute and do our job very, very well.”
Blaney’s victory – which is his first of the 2025 racing season – ensures that all three of his NASCAR Ford teammates from Team Penske will be included in the postseason Playoffs, following Joey Logano and Austin Cindric, both of whom secured wins earlier this year at Texas and Talladega, respectively.
In fact, Logano finished fourth, followed by Chevy driver William Byron in fifth. Blaney and Logano were the only NASCAR Ford Mustang racers to finish inside the top 10.
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