An up-and-down day for Ryan Blaney hit rock bottom as the No. 12 Team Penske driver was involved in a multicar wreck on Lap 196 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
The No. 12 Ford was in the midst of a four-wide battle exiting Turn 2 during a final stage restart in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race. Space eventually ran out as Blaney collided with Noah Gragson and Bubba Wallace. Erik Jones was also involved and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spun a ways back from the incident.
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After being evaluated and released from Las Vegas’ infield care center for the second time in as many days, Blaney explained a miscommunication may have led to the melee.
Before the wreckage, Wallace ran inside the top five up until the mishap. The No. 23 23XI Racing driver finished fourth in both Stage 1 and Stage 2 to collect 14 points on the day. He resumed following the incident and finished one lap down in 28th.
“Yeah, we were four-wide there, and honestly, I thought I had two (cars) inside and one outside of me,” Blaney said. “And I watched one little replay, and I had two outside, one inside, so I have to go back and see if I heard it wrong or if there was some miscommunication. I feel like I probably pitched those guys to the fence along the two, so it was probably my fault.”
After a practice crash Saturday forced him to start from the rear Sunday, Blaney methodically worked his way through the field to collect five points in Stage 2. It wasn’t a one-way trip to the front, however. The No. 12 Team Penske team had a slow stop on the first pit cycle that trapped Blaney two laps down, and the 2023 Cup champion had once again worked his way up to race with the leaders and was running inside the top 10 when the final-stage wreck triggered.
At the end of the first stage and trapped a lap down and reminded by crew chief Jonathan Hassler to keep fighting, an exasperated Blaney radioed: “I’m tired of fighting. Just want [expletive] to go right. But I’ll keep trying for you.”
Sunday’s DNF marked Blaney’s second in a row after a blown engine the week before at Phoenix Raceway. It’s also Blaney’s third consecutive finish of 19th or worse in the opening five races.
“You try to take the best you can out of it, even though it just ended poorly,” Blaney said. “Fought from the beginning in the race, get to 15th, 16th. Have a terrible pit stop, 30-second pit stop. Got two laps down. Takes a while to get back on the lead lap. Finally get going. Finally get to the top five, it’s like, all right, I think our car is really good. And then wrecked.”
The No. 12 team attempted to fix the vehicle in the garage after the crash, but eventually determined it could not return to competition.
“Just one of those weekends it seems like nothing could really go right,” Blaney said. “But you stick with it, stay in the game and the sun will come up tomorrow and we’ll be at the race track next week. That’s all you can do. But it is frustrating. It’s easy to get down. I just want to go home honestly and hang out with my wife tonight and just not think about racing for the evening and be ready to go Monday morning.”
Blaney and the NASCAR Cup Series will be back in action Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway (3 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).