Ryan Blaney on impersonating Chase Elliott and a what-if with Furniture Row: 12 Questions

Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Ryan Blaney, who is currently seventh in the NASCAR Cup Series standings for Team Penske. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. The full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.

1. You must pick one chore or obligation to do every day for a year. But if you do it every day for a year, you never have to do it again for the rest of your life. So what would you like to choose?

Either laundry or dishes. I actually don’t mind doing the dishes, so I’d say laundry. Throwing them in the washer and dryer isn’t really that hard, but I hate folding. And I’m not a good folder, either.

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Who is a good folder? That’s the worst part.

I mean, my mother is. My girlfriend (Gianna Tulio) is a good folder, too. But everyone folds a little differently. When we started living together, I didn’t like the way she folded my shirts. I’m like, “I don’t like this.” But now it’s just normal to me.

2. Can you describe how you are as a passenger in a street car?

I’m not a backseat driver by any means. I trust the person, whoever is driving me. I just sit back and do your own thing.

It kind of depends what seat you’re sitting in. If you’re in the front passenger seat, you’re in charge of the music. If you’re a back-seat passenger, you have free reign to do whatever you want. On your phone, fall asleep, do whatever you want. The front-seat passenger, you have an obligation to talk to the driver as well as to keep that person occupied and entertained. So I will talk, play music if I’m in the front seat. But if I sit in the back seat, I often get carsick, believe it or not.

You don’t want to be the person in the front seat who falls asleep, because that’s bad form.

No, that’s a bad thing. And I’ve had people do that. They’ve gotten in the front seat, called shotgun, and then they fall asleep. And my buddies in the back are up. I’m like, “OK, you screwed that up immensely.”

3. What is an app on your phone you love using and think more people should know about?

Getting into more golf the last two or three years, there’s an app called TheGrint. It’s where me and my buddies all have our golf scores and our handicaps. I’ve got 20 buddies on there and I can keep up with their live round scores. If you have four playing together, you can have this little tournament on there on this app.

So that’s my favorite, just because you can see all your buddies — like I get a notification if one of my buddies is playing, so I’ll watch his live score and s—talk him a little bit. If he’s having a bad round or something like that, I’ll make it worse.

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So you’ll check and be like, “Dude, you tripled No. 8? What happened?”

Yeah, I’ll just get all in his head. It’s amazing. I put notifications on, too. So if they tripled one, it dings me and then the floodgates are open.

4. What do you do to make yourself feel better when you’re having a crappy day?

I get over things pretty quickly, but my dogs always make me feel better. Because no matter how you’re feeling, they’re going to be excited to see you. And if you’re in a bad mood, you can’t be mean to your dogs. So it’s like, “OK, my mood has to get better if I’m coming home to my dog.”

That or just start drinking. (Laughs) I’m not, like, a sad drinker or anything like that. But a couple beers, if you come home after a crap day, they kind of make you feel a little bit better. And if you combine a couple of drinks with my dogs, that makes it even better.

5. This is a “Dear Abby” style question where I’ve asked people on Twitter to give me life advice questions and I’m picking a random one for each driver. This person says: “My friend got set up on a blind date, but before they even met, the guy started texting her constantly — like 60 times a day. So my friend got irritated and called off the date. What is the appropriate number of times to text a date before ever meeting them?”

I understand being excited about a blind date. But there’s no need to text someone 60 times a day. That’s a bit overkill. So the advice would be don’t go on the blind date.

So what’s the limit? Can you text like 10 times?

It depends. But if this person is sending 60 in a row … That’s even worse than a red flag.

I’ve never been on a blind date before, but if one of my buddies had hooked me up with one of his girlfriend’s friends or something, you could say you’re excited to meet them. Ask what they’re into. You can generally get to know the person a little bit so you have things to talk about, but don’t go overkill and waste all their minutes.

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6. The next one is a pop culture/societal type debate question. Let’s say someone is following you too closely and you’re on a one-lane road. What do you do? Do you speed up? Slow down? Brake-check them?

I just keep doing what I’m doing. If they really want to get by, they’ll do it. I’m not gonna pull over to let you go. And I’m not going to speed up, because now I’m going faster than I want to and I’m not wanting to get a speeding ticket because of you. I’m not going to brake-check you, because that’s how stuff starts and then you have that person even more mad.

If I’m going 10 miles an hour under the speed limit, I can understand why you’re riding me. But if I’m going like 5 mph over or doing the speed limit, if you really want to pass me, you can find hash marks and pass me. I’m really not changing anything I’m doing. That person can either stew over it, or find a way to get by. I’m not changing my day up for one person.

7. This next one is a wild-card question. I went back to the 2015 version of our 12 Questions and I’d asked you who you get mistaken for most often. At the time, you said it was Trevor Bayne. What would your answer be now?

I think (Bayne) was my answer then because I just started driving the 21 car and he was that guy for a while. So in the firesuit at the track, people mistook me for him. But now I get Chase (Elliott) a lot. I get (Corey) LaJoie every now and then.

So people are like, “Hey, Corey!”

Yeah. Corey says people call him me all the time. But I probably get Chase the most, and it’s fascinating to me because I look nothing like the guy. Sometimes we will mess with people. If we’re out somewhere and they mistake us, we’ll just roll with it.

Chase and I were out a couple years ago and one person thought we were each other and we rolled with it all night. … And I don’t know if that person ever found out. (Laughs)

That’s amazing. And you’re just answering in front of each other as if you’re the other person?

Oh yeah, it was great. Like, it was fantastic.

8. In your career, what is the deal that came closest to happening that ended up not working out?

No one knows this. Or I don’t think many people know this. Going into 2014, I was driving Brad (Keselowski’s) truck full-time and I was driving the Penske Xfinity car (part-time). Kurt Busch was going to Stewart-Haas and Furniture Row was trying to find a driver (to replace him). They actually asked me to drive the 78 car going into (2014). Martin (Truex) ended up doing it, but that was a conversation that went on for a few months. I was like, “That’s crazy. I’ve only driven Trucks and a little bit of Xfinity and these guys want me to drive for them.”

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It wasn’t really even close to happening. We just had a couple of talks with them. But that’s something I remember and that’s the only thing that could have been a different path for me.

9. Who is someone you would get starstruck by when meeting them?

I’ve gotten starstruck by a few people, but not many. Like when I met Michael Jordan for the first time, that was really neat. I met Kobe (Bryant); that was super cool. It’s people you liked as a kid, right? People you watched growing up and who you really enjoyed and you get to meet that person. That’s neat.

I met Daisy Ridley from “Star Wars” at a Lakers game, which was crazy. I was completely starstruck, and I probably missed my opportunity right there. But those three are probably the only three I’ve gotten starstruck by.

10. What is the single most important skill a race car driver can possess?

Obviously, having speed is one. That’s a big step. There’s an old saying about how you can always slow a driver down but you can never speed him up. So it’s having the sense of speed and being comfortable with it, especially as a kid, where you can mold it to be a part of you.

The biggest thing is always getting better and always improving. You always have to be better year to year, week to week. And if you’re comfortable with transforming yourself every race or every year to try and work on a different skill set, that’s really important to have.

That change is uncomfortable for people, right? Because maybe you’re doing something new. But the guys who can do that are super good. Jimmie Johnson, one of the greatest champions ever, won all the championships when the cars were evolving so much. That takes a lot of knowledge and technique.

11. What life lessons from a young age stick with you and affect your daily decisions as an adult?

It’s kind of corny and cliché, but my mother was a big preacher of “Treat everybody how you want to be treated and be a genuinely nice person.” So that obviously sticks with me ever since I’ve been a kid and it goes into adulthood. … Maybe you want to treat someone badly if they’ve done you wrong, but you want to stay true to what you were as a kid. So those two things Mom put in me at a young age, and I’ve tried to carry them into not only my professional life but my personal life, too.

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12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. William Byron was the last one and he wants to know: What is the most enjoyable part of golf and why?

The most enjoyable part of golf is what keeps everyone coming back, and it doesn’t matter if you’re the best golfer in the world or you’re the s—-iest golfer in the world. It’s that one shot where you feel like you are on top of the world, king of the mountain, where you’re like, “I got it. I can do this.” It’s searching for that shot you rarely get, but you do something that exactly in your head was what you wanted to do and you pull it off. That’s what keeps people coming back for more.

Numerous times I’ve had a terrible round, you get on No. 18 and you just pure the hole and you’re like, “I’m coming back. I’ll be here tomorrow morning.” So it’s just that search for that perfect shot.

And then you line up again and can’t replicate it.

Exactly. It’s the most frustrating thing ever.

Do you have a question I can ask the next person? It’s your Team Penske IndyCar teammate Scott McLaughlin.

Ask him what he likes and dislikes about being in America compared to New Zealand. That’d be interesting.

(Top photo: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)