Blaney gives Toyota a solid run at RIR, finishes 11th (cont'd)

That worked and Blaney drove up near the front before getting into the scrap with Marlin, Burton and Rudd.

"Our car actually responded fairly well; almost better than the other [regular] car," Hamlin said of Blaney's Car of Tomorrow.

Lap-by-Lap

Jimmie Johnson passed Kyle Busch on a restart on Lap 382 to win the Crown Royal 400 at Richmond Int'l Raceway.

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Blaney has been able to go fast at times this season whether running the COT or the regular car, just not at the times that count the most. He has qualified strong in several events -- starting 14th at Fontana, 11th in Las Vegas, seventh at Bristol and 11th at Phoenix.

But the strong qualifying runs hadn't translated into strong finishes. He finished 39th at Fontana, 42nd in Vegas, 23rd at Bristol and 39th in Phoenix.

And when Blaney failed to make a race for the first time at Talladega, the pressure was on for him to finally put together a decent showing in Richmond.

He qualified 10th, and was running as high as fifth before falling back because of the incident. But what may have been most impressive about his day was the way he fought back down the stretch under pressure to at least claw his way back to 11th.

"We came back at least at the end," he said. "We just ran out of time. We had new tires with 20 to go and everybody else probably had 60 or 70 [laps] on theirs. So we should have went for it pretty good right there; in fact, we should have gone further. At least we finished one -- we've had some trouble doing that."

Alas, the strong finish wasn't enough to pull Blaney back into the top 35 in driver points. He moved up one spot to 37th, but will still have to qualify on speed to get into next weekend's race at Darlington.

"We got a good qualifying run and stayed up front most of the day," Hamlin said. "Then we sort of had to come up with a new plan. We were probably going to finish sixth or seventh without getting into that deal at the end; but we drove our way back up there to 11th, so we can't be too dissatisfied with this, the way this year has gone for us."