Blaney fights with broken shifter as title bid slips away

“We didn’t finish the year like we wanted to, but we’ve got to look at the positive side,” the 20-year-old Blaney said. “We had a good year and we were in the hunt, and that’s all we can look at.”

The roundabout way to fifth place wasn’t without its adventures. When Blaney tried to leave his pit stall during the fourth of seven caution periods shortly after the race’s midpoint, the shifter level snapped off, forcing his No. 29 Ford to stall.

Once the word spread about the parts failure, his in-truck camera focused in as Blaney held up the broken lever. His Brad Keselowski Racing crew was able to inspect the damage on the SprintVision big screen behind their pit stall.

“Luckily, I guess the camera paid off because we had him hold up the piece so we could tell where it broke, how far,” said Chad Kendrick, Blaney’s crew chief. “We know what it looks like, and we knew depending on where it broke what we needed to do to try to help him out. So we knew how much nub was left and what the size was, so our plan was to try to change it, but we knew we’d lose a ton of track position — maybe even a lap — doing it. Then he said he would deal with it, and he did a great job dealing with it, but I don’t know how he did that.”

During the next caution period, they handed Blaney vise-grips, which he fiddled with for almost a full lap under yellow to rig a makeshift lever. Satisfied with his repair, Blaney methodically marched back into contention for the lead, eventually going three-wide up front with Sprint Cup star Kyle Busch and race winner Darrell Wallace Jr. with 15 laps remaining. But Blaney’s truck was better suited to longer green-flag runs, and he wound up shuffled back to the bottom of the top five amidst the hard-nosed racing.

“It took off a lot better than I thought it was going to at the end for about five or six laps, and then it fell off the way it did,” Blaney said. “Took off good, showed some promise, and shame it wasn’t a five-lap shootout deal at the end. Just couldn’t get it.”

Blaney and Kendrick debriefed on pit road afterward, eventually joined by their team owner. Keselowski peered into the cockpit to inspect the make-do shifter before congratulating both driver and crew chief on a solid campaign.

Kendrick shrugged at the final standings while the fireworks went off in Victory Lane, but he expressed optimism about BKR’s outlook while acknowledging Crafton’s historic achievement.

“You know, a top-five, I can’t hold my head down too low,” Kendrick said. “We wanted to win the championship. The first thing we had to do was outrun the 88 (Crafton) and we did that all night, but we needed him to have bad luck and it didn’t happen. Hats off to those guys — they ran good all year. We’ll come back next year and the team will look a little different, but we’ll be back here and try to get Ford some more victories.”

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