Ryan Blaney had one word to summarize his Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, where he and his Team Penske team were eliminated from championship contention, but not without a valiant fight.
“Bummer,” he said.
A victory was the only path forward to have the opportunity to race for a second NASCAR Cup Series championship. Blaney entered the weekend as the two-time and defending winner of the elimination race at Martinsville, and despite qualifying 31st, looked primed for a third win. Instead, he was bested by William Byron.
“We couldn’t get it done,” Blaney said. “At the end of the day, I’m super proud of the whole effort by everybody and coming from where we did – where we started – and making a bunch of ground early and contending for the win. It’s all you can ask for, and I said that all week. When everyone asked, ‘What are your goals this weekend?’ It was to go try to contend for it, and we did.
“Had a shot, and just the [No.] 24 was a little bit better than us at the end and was able to pass us on the long green flag and then hold us off on the restart. Props to them for doing good. It was fun racing with them. On our side, we gave 100 percent of what we had, and you can’t be too upset about that part. Obviously, it’s a bummer, like I said, to not go to Phoenix and race for a championship, but I know we gave it all we had.”
The pace with which Blaney drove through the field quickly got the attention of the competition. He started 31st, the worst of the playoff drivers and the only one to start outside the top 20, but was inside the top 15 by lap 77. He was inside the top 10 by lap 106.
Blaney finished seventh in the first stage, not that the points mattered, but he had track position and was in contention for the race win.
“Honestly, I thought it was impossible to win this race from 31st,” said Jeff Gordon. “We were chatting among ourselves, going, ‘The No. 12 just showed up.’ Once [Byron] got the lead, I thought, ‘Man, I don’t know how we’re going to get away from him.’”
Byron made the winning pass on lap 457 and did so with contact to his rival. Blaney had been dominating the second half of the race when Byron caught him as they navigated traffic, and Byron used that to get underneath Blaney in Turn 1 as the No. 12 tried to clear Ty Dillon. The two playoff contenders came together, knocking Blaney up the track.
The pass was the beginning of the end of Blaney’s title hopes. He never led again and was never able to mount a charge back on Byron.
“We’re both trying to win,” Blaney said of the contact. “I don’t think there is anything foul about it whatsoever. I kind of got [stuck] behind some lapped traffic and he had a little bit of momentum. I tried to protect and he took the chance, and I would do the same thing. I knew it was going to be tight getting in there three-wide, so I think that’s part of it with two guys going for it.”
Blaney was given one last shot at Byron when the caution flew with 18 laps to go. The leaders pitted with both drivers remaining in the top two spots. NASCAR restarted the race with 11 laps to go with the two on the front row.
“I thought I got a pretty good restart and kind of entered [Turn 1] maybe a foot behind his nose, and I thought I could roll a little momentum to maybe contend, but gosh, he just rolled through [Turns] 1 and 2 really fast and was already clear by a couple of car lengths before we got to 3,