LAS VEGAS: Ryan Blaney was good, but he wasn’t lucky and when you’re in Las Vegas – you kinda need a little bit of both.
While leading, the caution flag waved with six laps to go in Sunday afternoon’s Pennzoil 400 putting the Team Penske driver and team in an awkward situation knowing being the lead car whatever they did – most likely the field would do the exact opposite.
And a bunch did.
When Blaney brought his No. 12 Pennzoil Ford Mustang down pit road, seven cars elected to stay out while others that pitted took a bolder strategy and bolted on two tires instead of four for the two-lap sprint to the finish.
For Blaney though, a fast car didn’t matter as he couldn’t escape the chaos and the close quarters of the competition around him and when a wad of cars collided in the tri-oval coming to the white flag lap, the caution waved, and the race was over.
Blaney who restarted inside the top-15 only managed to get back to 11th.
The finish was hard for the High Point, N.C. native to swallow after being a major factor throughout the race’s 267-laps which included leading the race five times for 19 laps and while Blaney may have found himself in an intense battle with Alex Bowman who was quickly closing in on Blaney for the race lead in the closing laps, Blaney is leaving Las Vegas left wondering what could have been.
“It was just a crappy situation,” said Blaney after the race. “We fight our butts off to get the lead therefrom third and get it. I had a good shot of holding the 88 off. I thought we could have once we got in clean air I thought our car was pretty decent.
“The caution came out and we pitted, some guys didn’t, some guys took two and we just end up getting absolutely destroyed with people not knowing how many cars were to the outside of them.”
And while the team’s strategy didn’t pan out as they hoped, he was thankful for the fast race car his new crew chief Todd Gordon prepared.
“It’s easy to look back on it and say we should have stayed out,” added Blaney. “That’s a tough call for Todd Gordon in his position, but I’ve got to thank him for giving me a really good car. We were great on long runs.
“We were so good on long runs and that’s something to hold our heads up high about, it just stinks about the finish.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
