KANSAS CITY, Kan. – Ryan Blaney was fast on Saturday night at Kansas Speedway, but just not fast enough to score his first career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory in the Go Bowling 400.
The driver of the No. 21 Wood Bros. Racing Ford earned his first career Cup pole on Friday afternoon and led a race-high 83 laps which included a Stage 2 win, but the Team Penske driver fell short of the victory and had to settle for fourth, his best finish since a runner-up in February’s Daytona 500.
“We weren’t very good on the long run, said Blaney who rebounded from three straight finishes of 33rd or worse. “I felt that we had a great short run car tonight and I thought that was going to play right into our hands at the end.
“The 78 got us on that restart somehow. I don’t know. I was super loose there on the last restarts and the 78 got me spinning my tires a little bit. It kind of stinks. I think that it says a lot about this team to go out and lead some laps and go have a shot and win races.”
Even with two cautions within the closing laps of Saturday’s race, Blaney says his loose condition likely prevented him from challenging race winner Martin Truex Jr in the waning laps.
“I don’t know if I could have held him off even though I was really free the last two runs for some reason,” added Blaney. “I don’t know if the truck swung or we tried to make it take off a little bit faster and that hurt it. But a good showing, going out there and leading laps and running with some really good cars.
“That’s where this team deserves to be, and that’s where they hopefully will stay, so we keep bringing fast cars to the racetrack like that, you never know when maybe one might fall our way.
Still, Blaney was happy to right the ship off his No. 21 team after a stretch of bad races at Bristol, Richmond and Talladega which dropped him from 10th to 13th in the championship standings.
“Yes, it’s really just nice to be back on track to be honest with you,” he said. “The last three races have been really, really bad, and it’s just an extra kind of slap to the face that we’ve had really fast cars in all those races we had troubles in, and we shouldn’t have finished 35th. We should have had top 10s in all of them. So, it was nice to show our muscle this weekend and prove that, like I said, this is where the 21 team deserves to be, so it’s just nice to get back on track.
“Going to a few racetracks that are pretty good for us, Charlotte and then we’ll keep moving on. It’s nice to have a good run tonight. Yeah, of course we wanted to win, but at the same time, you look at the gains we made all weekend and really being fast all weekend, that puts us back to where we need to be for sure.”
Following his fourth top-10 of the year, Blaney picked up two spots in points and is now 11th, 26 points behind Clint Bowyer.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01 or email cknight@catchfence.com.
