DARLINGTON, S.C. — Ryan Blaney had plenty to take away from a valiant charge in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series showdown at Darlington Raceway — gobs of long-run speed in his No. 12 Team Penske Ford, a savvy pit strategy that nearly paid off, and a post-race smack on the behind from NBA great Michael Jordan, who had just finished consoling 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick moments earlier. Areas of improvement in execution, though, were also on the takeaway list.
Blaney nearly completed a sterling surge on fresher tires down the stretch in Sunday’s Goodyear 400 but came up short of his first victory of the Cup Series season. A fifth-place result was just his second top-five finish of the year, but his first since February at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
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Blaney’s No. 12 Mustang — bearing a throwback look reminiscent of a long-ago design that his father, Dave, once drove — methodically tracked down Reddick’s No. 45 Toyota with sights on the lead in what was shaping up to be the final green-flag run to the end. He’d benefited from a strategy play by crew chief Jonathan Hassler, who stopped on the 247th of a scheduled 293 laps, slightly later than other contenders — a move that provided him with fresher Goodyear rubber for the final push.
“Honestly, really, when I got to like fifth, I was like, ‘Dude, he’s really far away. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get there,’ but those guys just hit a cliff, and I just never did,” Blaney said on pit road post-race. “I kind of kept trucking, and when I got to second and it was, like, nine (laps) to go, I was kind of tongue-out for like four laps, but then I’m like, I think I’m gonna have enough.”
Credit Hassler for putting his driver on offense after the final green-flag cycle, a pivotal turn of events that unraveled the race-long domination of William Byron, who led the first 243 laps.
“Honestly, I thought our car was really good. All day, it would take off pretty well,” Hassler said. “We were able to pass some guys, even on restarts, and then as the run went on, we certainly got better. Then, when we kind of lost a little bit of track position there, our kind of only play was to try and run long like that. Worked out probably better than I thought it would, with the chance to take a win.”
On Lap 290, Blaney closed on Reddick and finally scraped by with a slight side tap, but when Kyle Larson’s damaged No. 5 Chevy spun and crashed behind them, the race teetered toward overtime. Blaney pitted from the lead with the other front-runners but exited pit road in fourth place, putting him on Row 2 for the two-lap sprint to the finish as Denny Hamlin roared away from the No. 1 perch to his second straight victory.
“If the caution didn’t come out, I thought we had one easily,” Blaney said. “We were so much faster on newer tires. It was a great strategy running long. Those guys short-pitted, and they were struggling real bad. I mean, I thought, if we could have just got off (Turn) 2 with the lead and caution didn’t come out, I thought I’d have kind of ride off the sunset. Just, not how it worked unfortunately and lost the lead on pit road, lost a front-row starting spot, and never had a shot.”
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Blaney was put in the position of playing catch-up for much of the afternoon, with a collection of pit-stop miscues costing him ground. Blaney stopped deep in his pit box on his first stop, getting hemmed in behind the No. 88 Chevrolet of Shane van Gisbergen. He was in fourth place at the end of Stage 2, but trouble with jacking up the left side of the car during the break dropped him to 16th place for the start of the final stage.
According to Racing Insights, the No. 12 team lost a total of 20 spots on pit road over the course of the day, including a critical final three positions before overtime.
“Yeah, we’ve just got some things to work on, you know?” Blaney said. “I mean, I make mistakes. I screw up a lot. Those guys don’t have great stops every now and then. It’s just part of the sport. But you know, they’ll go to work, they’ll figure it out, where do they need to improve, just like we do with the race car. Where have we got to improve on that? So those guys do the same thing, and we’ll try to come back even better.”
Said Hassler: “I mean, our team is our team. Our guys are our guys, and we know we’ve got areas to work on, but we could be certainly proud of the speed that we’ve had, and the group’s perfectly capable. We’ve just got to clean it up and we’ll be there, hopefully sooner rather than later.”
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