It's all too common in NASCAR for young drivers with talent to show up and ruffle feathers with aggressive moves or brash comments. Ryan Blaney chose to follow a different path, which helped him earn respect early.
How did he achieve this? The simple answer is that he wasn't wrecking people all of the time. The deeper answer is that family lessons put him on the right path.
"Honestly, it was just how my dad raised me," Blaney said Saturday at Pocono Raceway. "My dad taught me at a young age of just, 'Hey, here is how my dad taught me, so this is how I'm going to teach you.'
"'Treat others with respect. Race how they race you.' So, right, there's certain situations to where it might get a little bit more aggressive if you feel like you've been done wrong, but I've just never really been the type of person to be the initial aggressor."
These lessons from Blaney's father helped him avoid controversy on the track -- for the most part. He didn't blatantly wreck other drivers, and he didn't become the topic of media sessions like Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano before him or Ross Chastain and Carson Hocevar after him.
That doesn't mean Blaney made it through completely unscathed. As a NASCAR quiz from 2017 showed, he did draw the ire of a NASCAR champion, Matt Kenseth, while racing at Martinsville Speedway.
"I just try to go about it the right way," Blaney added. "And that is the best thing I think you can do to somebody to really show like your dominance on the racetrack is pass them clean. Like, it's pretty easy to just run through somebody and you're on your merry way.
"And I just, I feel like it sends more of a message if you can drive around them on the outside or just pass them clean and leave them. And so it was just how my dad kind of told me the right ways to race. That was how he was raised and that's how I was raised. So it's just kind of been who I was."
One reason Blaney faced these questions at Pocono Raceway -- the site of his first Cup victory -- is that he has grown into a leader in the NASCAR garage. He is a champion with 14 career wins.
Blaney has also watched as young drivers have worked their way to the to top level of NASCAR and immediately sparked criticism with some of their decisions.
Hocevar, in particular, has been involved in two incidents with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. over the past three weeks, leading to the promise of a beating. This continued a trend from his time in both the Truck Series and Cup Series where he showed impressive speed but made questionable moves behind the wheel.
Blaney also had a post-race conversation with Hocevar at EchoPark Speedway in February after an incident on the track that sent the 2023 Cup champion spinning onto the apron.
Blaney called Hocevar a "weapon" over the radio and said to media members that he was overly aggressive at times.
"I don't want to make dumb decisions," Chastain told reporters after the February race. "I don't want to crash anybody, but I want to race and I want to race them as hard as I physically can because I'm doing it with a team that is trying to build.
"We don't have the advantage of having the fastest cars yet. We don't have the advantage of having the cleanest of air."
Hocevar and Spire Motorsports didn't have the fastest cars early in the season. Now, however, they have cars that can win the pole and then lead laps at a variety of tracks.
This includes Hocevar spending 22 laps at the front of the pack at Texas and 32 at the front at Michigan. He was also in contention for the win in the Coca-Cola 600 before an engine failure.
The cars are faster and Hocevar continues to gain experience as a Cup driver. It's too late for him to follow Blaney's path, one that helped the future champion build respect early.
Instead, he can follow the path laid out by Keselowski, Logano, and other young drivers. Just adapt with the times, change how you approach certain situations, and slowly gain respect from veterans and peers.
This worked out well for Keselowski and Logano, in particular, as they both won championships.