Ryan Blaney found late-race trouble in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race, exiting with an engine issue at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Blaney was running third when his No. 12 Team Penske Ford began showing heavy smoke in the 208th of a scheduled 267 laps in Sunday’s Straight Talk Wireless 400. He emerged from his car on pit road as track workers tended to clean-up.
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Blaney had led a race-high 124 laps before being sidelined. The result is his third consecutive DNF (did not finish), following a crash last week at Las Vegas and another engine failure the previous week at Phoenix. According to NASCAR Insights, it’s the first time in his Cup Series career that Blaney has recorded three straight DNFs.
“I didn’t have any warning,” Blaney said. “It just laid over when I got back to wide-open down the front and that was all she wrote. It just stinks. We had a really fast Dent Wizard Ford Mustang. We led a lot of laps. We lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me and Bubba (Wallace) and (Kyle) Larson. I’m sure Denny (Hamlin) was gonna get back into it. It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us. We’ll continue to keep fighting.
“I appreciate the 12 guys for just giving me a hot rod. It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our heads up. It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for. We’ll keep on moving.”
Blaney started sixth in the 37-car field, but will be credited with a 36th-place finish. He entered the 400-mile event ranked seventh in the Cup Series standings through five races.