DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Blaney climbed from his damaged, flaming No. 12 Ford physically fine but mentally at his wits’ end.
The defending NASCAR Cup Series champion was one of a number of victims involved in an 11-car crash at Lap 48 in the second race of Thursday night’s Bluegreen Vacations Duels at Daytona International Speedway. As a result, Blaney, Kyle Busch and select others will be forced to use backup cars in Monday’s 66th annual Daytona 500 (4 p.m. ET, FOX, FOX Deportes, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
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Blaney was running fifth, single-file, exiting Turn 4 when he pulled to the outside of William Byron for fourth place. Byron blocked and Blaney dove low. Blaney had a run and Byron lost momentum. Byron’s loss of speed led the drafting duo of Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski to Byron’s rear bumper in the center of the track’s tri-oval from Busch, who was simultaneously being shoved by Keselowski. The contact to Byron’s bumper sent him sideways, clipping Blaney in the right rear and sending him head-on into the retaining SAFER barrier.
Thursday marked the third consecutive race at Daytona that resulted in Blaney being hooked in the right rear. With another significant wreck, his frustrations boiled over.
“It comes from awful pushes by people,” Blaney said after being evaluated and released from the infield care center. “I mean, three times here in a row awful pushes have led me to getting right-reared. And it’s just guys not being smart, not knowing when to get off somebody. Like, you cannot push in the corner that hard in the tri-oval. I don’t know when guys are gonna get it.
“I’m sick of paying the expense of it and getting right-reared from someone’s dumb push. So it’s just frustrating because we do everything right, and then you have guys who are just careless and just shove guys until they just don’t know when to let them go and it causes wrecks, and I just seem to be the byproduct of getting hooked in the right rear, which is never fun.”
The annoyance — or plain anger — is fueled by past impacts he’s taken at the 2.5-mile superspeedway, not the least of which was a front-end crash from the lead during the 2023 regular-season finale, going nose-first into the Turn 4 wall.
“Pissed. I’m pissed. I’m sick of getting right-reared here by someone else’s awful push …,” he said. “We have a backup car for the 500. Did everything right tonight, and now we have to work our ass off the next two days trying to get a 500 car ready, so I’m pissed and I have every right to be pissed.”
Busch, a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, felt nearly helpless as he and Keselowski caught Byron with nowhere else to dart.
“The big run that the 12 got kind of got the 24 (Byron) shucked out of line,” Busch said. “He lost momentum. I’m seeing that lifting, rolling out of the gas, trying not to hit the 24 and I’m getting a little bit of bump from behind from the 6 (Keselowski) also, not really seeing through me what’s going on, and just hit the 24 in the tri-oval where you’re not supposed to and spun them out and caused the wreck. So just an accordion-type deal, but it happens that way.”
Busch clarified he isn’t laying the blame on Keselowski, the 2012 Cup champion who wasn’t aware how quickly he and Busch were catching Byron.
“It’s just the nature of what all this stuff is,” Busch said.