TALLADEGA, Ala: Defending YellaWood 500 champion Ryan Blaney had a fast enough Ford Mustang to win Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Playoff race at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, but any chances of a repeat victory were eliminated after Blaney crashed crossing the start-finish line at the end of Stage 2.
Blaney, driver of the No. 12 Pennzoil Ford Mustang, twice for six laps throughout the final superspeedway race of the 2024 Cup Series season, but a shove from Alex Bowman with the green and white checkered flag waving with points on the line proved to be too much for the reigning Cup Series champion to control turning the car abruptly right into the path of Ross Chastain with Team Penske teammate Joey Logano and Playoff rival Denny Hamlin also receiving damage.
Blaney was credited with an eighth-place finish in the stage, collecting three valuable points toward the Playoffs, but suffered a frustrating 39th-place finish — the lowest among the Playoff drivers.
The vehicle was damaged beyond repair, but Blaney, under the direction of his Team Penske team, remained on the track in the event they could collect a position or two under the yellow flag.
After two laps and zero water pressure, the engine finally seized Blaney’s Ford Mustang, forcing the 12-time Cup Series winner to climb from his car and end his day.
The High Point, N.C. native was quickly evaluated and released from the infield care center, where he vented off his frustration about the aggressive contact from the Hendrick Motorsports driver to end the Lap 120 stage.
“I don’t know if he ever lifted and just drilled me from like three car lengths back,” said Blaney of the incident. “The worst possible spot you could do it, so it’s pretty dumb on his part and it figures that he gets away scot free per usual. That’s the end of the day.”
With drivers and teams jockeying for position in the last lap of Stage 2, Blaney got shoved to the middle lane, and while he thought he would have been OK to escape the middle stage of the
race without any trouble, the push gone wrong resulted in his seventh DNF (did not finish) of the 2024 season.
“I thought Austin (Cindric) and I worked well together,” added Blaney. “I had a feeling that the 8 (Kyle Busch) would pull out and help Chevy. He wasn’t gonna help me, obviously, so we got in the middle. I didn’t think it was terrible.
“We were probably still gonna run fifth or sixth, and then the 48 (Bowman) just drove straight through me in the tri-oval. He just wrecked the shit out of me. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”
Looking in his rearview mirror coming to the start-finish line, Blaney could see Bowman’s momentum surge and thought he would react quick enough that he would likely not trigger an accident.
“I thought he would have more sense than that, but obviously he didn’t,” explained Blaney. “Yeah, I see him coming and I see him hauling ass towards me and you kind of have to lift a little bit. You can’t just run wide-open through somebody in the tri-oval, but he did.”
Blaney and his No. 12 Team Penske team will pick up the pieces from Talladega and head to the final Round of 12 at the newly reconfigured Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway ROVAL race on October 13.
Despite the poor finish at Talladega, Blaney remains 25 points above the cutoff as the sixth-place seed.
The points scenario looked much different at the time of his incident at Lap 120. However, when a massive 28-car Talladega Cup record pileup occurred on Lap 184 and collected several Playoff drivers, the points shifted momentum in favor of Blaney, who finished 12th in last year’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 cutoff race.
Follow Chris Knight on X (Twitter) @Knighter01 or email at [email protected].
