DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Ryan Blaney is frustrated as he enters Sunday’s scheduled 66th Daytona 500.
The defending NASCAR Cup Series champion entered the week with confidence that he could finally end his collection of second place finishes in the Daytona 500 and score his first victory in NASCAR’s centerpiece event.
Instead, the driver of the No. 12 Ford Mustang for Team Penske was upset at the style of racing he experienced in Thursday night’s Bluegreen Vacations Duel.
Instead of racing for the victory in the second Duel, his car was involved in a massive crash at the tri-oval that red flagged the race to clean up the carnage.
Blaney’s Ford was destroyed and on fire as it skidded across the track before coming to a stop in the grass. He was able to climb out of the car uninjured, but the experience has left some resentment.
“I saw the replays and saw all I needed to see,” Blaney said Saturday morning at Daytona Int’l Speedway. “I’m not going to call out anybody, but I was just frustrated at getting hooked in the right-rear here multiple times.
“That’s frustrating when you take a 70g hit last year and I take a 55g hit this year. It’s just frustrating, so it was just aggressive pushes in Duels that I thought were a little bit over the top for the timing of it and for the moment that it was in the Duels, but I haven’t talked to anybody.
“Hopefully, I just don’t get hooked in the right-rear again because it’s no fun.
“It sucks.”
Strong words from the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion, but he needed to be heard.
The Team Penske driver will be in a backup Ford Mustang when the 66th Daytona 500 gets underway. It is scheduled for Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time, but there is a weather system in Florida that may complicate that.
Rain on Saturday morning was the reason NASCAR canceled the final NASCAR Cup Series practice. That didn’t change Blaney’s plan because he wasn’t going to run laps in the final practice.
“We weren’t planning on it regardless of rain or not,” Blaney said. “I thought the backup car yesterday was good. I kind of learned all I needed to learn in the small pack that we had, kind of getting pushed, I wanted to feel that.
“How can I take a push? How can I push somebody? How did it handle in a couple of funky situations off of turn four? And I was very happy with it. I couldn’t tell a difference and that’s what you want – not being able to tell a difference between backup car and primary, so they did a good job of getting that thing ready.”
Every team arrives at Daytona with a plan. Normally, that plan doesn’t include preparing a backup car for the biggest race of the year.
“All of our group, you don’t normally get backup cars ready,” Blaney said. “This is not really a thing anymore.
“I think you have that mindset coming down here that you can – that you might need to use a backup car – and they did a good job of working super hard Thursday night.
“NASCAR let them in a few hours early yesterday morning, which really helped those guys out of getting ready before practice, so I think our piece is just as good as it was Thursday night and hopefully it shows come Sunday again.”
Because the impact was so hard, Blaney admitted he has a few ailments from the collision with the frontstretch wall.
“I’m sore, that’s for sure,” Blaney said. “I’m probably more sore today than yesterday. I feel like the second day is always the day of more soreness – the neck area, all down the back, just muscles getting strained. That’s kind of the biggest thing.
“Everything else felt fine, just all of your muscles down your shoulders and stuff gets pulled in weird areas that you’re not used to, so that’s the most sore today. I’ve been trying to be ginger with it. Everything else I felt fine with mentally and stuff like that, so that was good.
“But I’ll be fine to go hopefully if we were to run tomorrow, I’d be good to go then. If I get another buffer day, if we run Monday, I’ll be even better. Just a little sore, but that stuff will pass.”
Blaney, who was also involved in a hard impact from a crash last August, is confident the pain won’t affect his racing game.
“I would say more of my body felt sore in August for longer, and I was able to be home in August to try and get worked on by people at home,” Blaney said. “Here, I haven’t been able to get worked on as much as I did last year just with the people not being here. They went home after the Duels.
“We have a great physical therapist in our camp that she is amazing, so she’ll be able to help me out tomorrow a little bit if I’m still feeling sore.
“The impact wasn’t as bad as last year’s, but still pretty brutal. I was happy with how the car crushed. I haven’t seen a right-front in the fire wall before, so I think everything that they’ve done NASCAR-wise to get these things to crush more is good, and there’s some stuff that I’ve talked to them about to try to get better and better, but I think she’ll help me out tomorrow if I still need it.”
Blaney is doing his best to move beyond the frustration of hard hits and getting hooked at Daytona. But it does weigh on the drivers who have to face adverse risks, especially at tracks like Daytona and Talladega where a massive impact from a multi-car crash lurks just around every corner.
“When those things happen, you get frustrated about it,” he admitted. “Like, ‘Gosh, I can’t believe I got right reared for the third time at this place in a row.’ That’s the frustrating part about it and it’s like, ‘When is this going to end?’
“It’s like the tale of two race track for me. Talladega, for some reason, we have really good fortune and don’t really get caught up in many incidents and run up towards the front, and here at this place the last few times I’ve been here I just can’t do no right and just feel like I get caught up in a product of someone else’s mess and that’s just a product of it.
“I’ve put in my head a while ago going to these speedways of, ‘Hey, things can happen and it’s out of my control, so I’m not really going to let it get to me too much.’
“I’ll be frustrated with it for a few hours, but I wake up the next day and I’m over it and just try to figure out the next deal and that was figuring out how to get our backup car to where it needs to be and strategizing for the race.
“It’s just frustrating when those things happen, but I try to get over things very, very quickly.”