Ryan Blaney’s NASCAR playoff struggles can be erased with a top-5 finish at Bristol
Before the start of the NASCAR Cup playoffs, Ryan Blaney said he wanted to have a win “or be really good on points” prior to the first elimination race at Bristol Motor Speedway this Saturday.
That’s not how the No. 12 Ford driver and his team have fared. Blaney dropped from seventh in points standings to 16th place after the first two postseason races, and is in jeopardy of missing the Round of 12 for the first time in four seasons.
Former Cup driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said before the playoffs that Blaney could be a Championship 4 contender. Blaney raced a consistently fast car and won the most stage points during the regular season, but a string of team errors combined with unfortunate luck on cautions at Darlington, then almost no cautions at Richmond, contributed to a pair of bottom-25 finishes for the Penske team.
Blaney’s crew chief Todd Gordon detailed the issues that led to the No. 12’s rough playoff start and what that means for the team heading into the cutoff race this weekend. Gordon told The Observer that the team’s goal is to run in the top-five the entire Bristol race.
“And then when we get to the end of the race, if we’ve gotta win, then we have to take more chances,” Gordon said. “But if you start taking those chances at Lap 1, you’ll end up wrecking your day.”
Gordon said he’s preaching a “focus-forward” attitude to his team, but it will be a challenge to make up for the points lost. Blaney is sitting 27 points below the 12-driver cutoff.
Before Darlington, an improperly mounted ballast cost the No. 12 team 10 points, its seventh-place starting position and required a crew chief substitution for the race. Problems seemed to spiral for the next 252 laps — or rather the next 654 laps if you include Richmond.
A flat tire kept the team on pit road when the race went green to start the second stage at Darlington, undoing the track position Blaney gained in the first stage. Blaney raced back to the lead lap to close Stage 2 despite being stuck on pit road when a caution was called. But after a yellow flag in the final stage, Blaney made contact with another car in the restart zone with 125 laps left, capping a rough night with more disaster.
Gordon said that, although hardly visible to viewers, it was a “fair amount of contact” that grossly moved the splitter and caused damage the team couldn’t recover from.
“We came down pit road and tried to tape up the hood, the fenders and things like that, but it became pretty obvious that we bent the splitter up,” Gordon said. “Bent the nose up and needed to work on that. We just didn’t have enough adjustment to get it back down to where it needed to be on the racetrack.”
Blaney finished 24th without gaining any stage points, dropping him 17 points below the cutoff and tied with Matt DiBenedetto. That also put Blaney in 15th for the start of the next race at Richmond, a track where the 26-year-old driver and his team historically struggle.
Things didn’t get better. The crew didn’t tighten lug nuts enough on the left front tire during the competition caution, and Blaney had to re-pit during the green flag, costing significant track position in a race in which hardly any cautions were called (only mandatory ones at the stage breaks and for competition).
“Really, that kind of started the demise of the day,” Gordon said. “I wouldn’t say that we were terrible, but we weren’t exceptional and just didn’t have enough speed in the car to recover from that lost track position.”
Blaney finished in 19th, and again did not earn any stage points. He enters the first cutoff race at Bristol on Saturday two points behind DiBenedetto. But Gordon said he’s not dwelling on past races, nor does he feel like the team’s in a “do-or-die situation,” in which they need to “throw everything out the window and try to win a race.”
“Am I disappointed with where we’re at? Of course I am,” Gordon said. “But the thing I’m focused on right now is what we can do to go be successful at Bristol because that’s what we’ve got ahead of us.”
He said he’s counting on scoring the most stage points possible, then letting the field fall where it may.
“I think people that do that (go for the win) are desperate and more times than not hurt yourselves in those situations,” Gordon said. “I mean, let’s be honest. It’s Bristol. It’s a short-track. There will be wrecks and carnage.”
Gordon also noted that although Blaney wrecked out of the first race at Bristol in May, and finished sixth in the All-Star Race at the same track; the team has brought a fast car to the Tennessee short track, which offers some hope.
“We’re in a situation where I feel like our speed, if we can go score 15 stage points between the two stages, hey, we’re back in the battle,” Gordon said. “We’re at least moving towards the battle around that final transfer spot.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
