Ryan Blaney comes up one spot short at Martinsville in must-win race: ‘I’m not going to Phoenix’
MARTINSVILLE, Va. – When Ryan Blaney left Talladega Superspeedway last weekend, he didn’t think he should be labeled as the favorite to win the Round of 8 elimination race at Martinsville Speedway. Yet the No. 12 team rose to the occasion.
Blaney took the lead in Sunday’s Xfinity 500 just past the midway point. Four-time Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon thought Hendrick Motorsports’ shot of advancing multiple teams into the Championship 4 turned bleak.
However, William Byron and the No. 24 car were just as strong this weekend.
“The 24 was the best car all night,” Blaney said. “You don’t lead [304] laps without being the best car all night.”
With the laps ticking away, Byron was glued to Blaney’s back bumper during a long green-flag stint. While maneuvering through lapped traffic, Byron dove to the inside of the No. 12 car, making a three-wide pass with Ty Dillon on the top lane. The two leaders made contact, and the No. 24 Chevrolet surged to the lead.
“I think we left [Byron] a lane,” Jonathan Hassler, Blaney’s crew chief, said. “It looked like [Byron] ran the groove that he had been running most of the race. He tends to wash up to the middle in the center. I don’t know that contact was necessary, but it is probably to be expected here at Martinsville.”
Blaney understood the contact from Byron, noting if roles were reversed, there would have been a similar outcome.
“That’s just two guys going for it,” Blaney stated. “I don’t blame him for taking that. I kind of lost momentum. I would have done the same thing, to be honest. I knew it was going to be tight. I tried to crowd as much as I could.”
Byron drove away from Blaney until Carson Hocevar spun with 18 laps remaining, which bunched the field back together. Every lead lap car pitted for fresh Goodyear rubber, with the No. 24 team winning the race off pit road. Blaney came off pit road in second, and he chose the outside of the front row for the restart with 11 laps remaining.
The No. 24 car had a strong launch on the restart, leaving Blaney in the dust. When the checkered flag flew, Blaney’s second-place finish meant he was the first driver to miss the Championship 4 of the playoff drivers who needed to win at Martinsville.
“I entered side-by-side with him close to [him] and he worked through the middle, throttled up and drove away from me,” Blaney added about the restart. “That was all I had.
“I’m not going to Phoenix.”
To reach the lead for a season-high 177 laps, Blaney was surprised after starting in 31st position. The No. 12 car advanced through the field rapidly, earning four stage points in the opening stage with just one caution flag. At Lap 106, he already made his way inside the top 10.
“Where we got to in the first run was encouraging, especially where we got through at the end of the first stage was encouraging,” Blaney stated. “But still got to keep up with the race track and it getting cooler and racing different people and stuff like that. Really proud of the effort. Really good job from where we started and got our car a lot better from practice.”
With both Blaney and Joey Logano missing out on the Championship 4, Team Penske will be shut out of the possibility of winning its fourth consecutive Bill France Cup trophy. Only Hendrick Motorsports, Junior Johnson and Associates and Penske have ever won three straight Cup titles.
Losing control of last weekend’s race at Talladega Superspeedway and early misfortune at Las Vegas put Penske’s duo in a must-win scenario at Martinsville. Ultimately, the team knows it still has work to do despite its recent success.
“Definitely way more difficult for us than normal,” Travis Geislar, Penske’s competition director, said. “This is usually a good round for us; three great tracks. Nothing really worked out the way we needed it to and you have to be perfect in this round to get through. You look at it and three [playoff] cars won, and you had one car get through on points. That is what you have to count on. We didn’t get the wins and we didn’t get the perfect points, so you’re on the outside looking in.”
Hassler, the 2023 Cup Series championship-winning crew chief, can pinpoint exact areas where the team can improve.
“We still have areas to work on and things to go and try and do better,” Hassler said. “Obviously, the Gibbs camp has gotten a lot better. I think their intermediate program has been really good and we have to go to work over the winter and make that better, as well as the rest of our deficiencies.”
Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing can breathe a sigh of relief as both organizations have mentioned in recent weeks that Penske would be the favorite should they advance to the Championship 4 at Phoenix.