Blaney Remains Optimistic After ‘Rough Weekend’ at Las Vegas

By Luis Torres, Staff Writer

Ryan Blaney’s disastrous weekend in “Sin City” is now in the books after finishing 32nd in Sunday’s South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The defending NASCAR Cup Series champion’s setback started during Saturday’s practice session where he only logged in a single lap before a flat tire sent him careening into the Turn 1 wall, making contact on the driver’s side.

Blaney was able to exit out of his car before being checked and released from the infield care center.

Consequently, Blaney had to roll off 37th for the 267-lap race with zero intentions of being in the back. The No. 12 Menards/Great Stuff Ford worked its way into the top-20 before Lap 60 and ultimately came up a spot shy of ending Stage 1 in the top-15.

Blaney ended up 16th in the stage, passing Noah Gragson for the position on the backstretch. Slowly, but surely, the Penske veteran driver had pace of a solid points day that comes a long way in this treacherous Playoff round.

However, Blaney’s day went south on Lap 89 for a chaotic accident that was out of his own doing. Blaney was running in 17th when the biggest crash of the afternoon happened heading into Turn 4 that collected fellow Playoff contenders Chase Elliott and Tyler Reddick with the latter flipping over.

Attempting to avoid the carnage, Blaney saw a windshield full of Keselowski and darted right to avoid his wrecked car. With little real estate, Blaney slapped the outside wall which damaged the right rear of his No. 12 machine and he had no choice but to have his car repaired.

Adding insult to injury, Blaney’s right rear went down and spun around just as he was heading to pit road. He was able to bring his car into the pits for his crew to assess the damage, but initially lost two laps in the process.

“I thought I could get around him and didn’t know if he’d come up the racetrack and then by the time he was kind of on the track it was too late,” Blaney said of the multi-car accident. “I got clipped and bent everything all to hell, so it was just a rough weekend.”

For the remainder of the race, Blaney simply kept his car on track to salvage any positions possible. However, there would be two more cautions with one being due to a spin from Ty Gibbs. Despite no other car retiring after the Lap 89 crash, Blaney would play a small yet integral role on the finish.

In the closing laps, Blaney’s teammate Joey Logano was hunting down Daniel Suarez for the lead. That’s were Blaney came into play as he helped give Logano a bit of drafting help and ultimately gave him the race lead over Suarez coming to five to go.

Logano ended up winning the race to punch his ticket into the Championship 4 for the sixth time of his career — all taking place in even years. Meanwhile, all Blaney could do was mustard a 32nd place finish, eight markers behind the race winner.

All the agonizing shortcomings puts Blaney seventh in points, 47 points below the cutline currently held by William Byron heading into Homestead-Miami Speedway.

As Blaney remarked in his post-race comments, this round is far from over and far from considering throwing in the towel.

“We’re still alive. It’s definitely not the best of days. It was just a rough weekend overall,” said Blaney. “I don’t know what to do about it, to be honest with you, running over something and having a hole in it in practice. And then just getting clipped by (Keselowski).

“We still have two more weeks, so we’re definitely not out of it.”