Blaney fights back to a top five after early Martinsville miasma
Ryan Blaney took a Ford Mustang Dark Horse he described as not doing anything right less than 60 laps into Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway to a hard-fought fifth-place finish.
“I’m proud of the fight back,” Blaney said. “It was going to be a long day for a while, and it ended up not being a terrible day. It was still a long day, but nice to get a good finish.”
Believe it or not, a potential loose wheel, big adjustments and a two-tire call aided Blaney’s team. The reigning series champion started ninth and fell to 11th at the end of the first stage. Blaney fought loose, being unable to put the power down and struggled for rear grip. During this stage, he told his team the car was doing “nothing good, currently.”
At the end of the first stage, Blaney made his pit stop with the rest of the leaders but then returned to pit road because of issues with the lug nut on the left rear. During the second stop, the Penske team took big swings on adjustments for the No. 12 entry.
“I knew it really, really hard to pass,” Blaney said of losing his track position because of the additional pit stop. “In my head, I was like, ‘Man, this is going to be a really tall task to try to get back up there,’ because no one could pass anybody all day. It was super tough. Luckily, I knew we were going to have to get creative, and we did, and that’s just a good job by [crew chief Jonathan Hassler].”
Blaney ended the second stage in the 20th position, but the car started coming around. The creativity came when Hassler called for two tires going into the final stage, which jumped the team into eighth place.
“I thought it just took a little bit to get back up [there], and the two-tire call was a good call,” Blaney said. “We were able to hang decent and all that. And then I was proud of our pace. Our pace after the green flag stop was really good. We went from 10th and got to fifth and then was all over the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin) and just kind of used my stuff up getting there, and you get hit traffic and slow down 0.3s.”
Once inside the top 10 with track position, Blaney never fell behind again. It was just a tougher day than anticipated after he dominated and won at Martinsville Speedway in the fall.
“We changed some stuff up a little bit just trying to learn and evolve, and it was a little bit different package, too,” Blaney said. “But I was kind of that way in practice yesterday; felt the same, and we just didn’t adjust enough for the race.
“The temperature was fairly similar to the fall, but a little bit different package, and we tried some new things. Just trying to learn for [this] fall.”
Blaney was running fifth when the final caution came out with three laps to go. The leaders stayed on track, and Blaney chose the outside lane, which put him fourth for the restart. He lost a spot to Bubba Wallace in the final two laps.
“I didn’t think we were very good early and struggled, and then was going to have a loose wheel and had to come back pit road and just kind of weren’t going anywhere,” Blaney said. “Jonathan made a good call to put two tires on it, kind of established us, and then the green flag run, I was pretty good. I drove up from 10th all the way to fifth.
“That [last] restart, I thought I was going to be able to clear the No. 5 (Kyle Larson) and the No. 9 (Chase Elliott) got in there and checked up hard in the middle of [Turns] 1 and 2, and I bumped into him. But overall, really proud of the effort. [It was an] up and down day, and it’s nice to end it with some pace. That’s nice.”
