It appears Ryan Blaney will be carrying a grudge in the coming weeks.
Sunday at Darlington the Team Penske driver was running in the top five on a restart on lap 129. Exiting Turn 2 he was trapped on the outside of a three-wide battle with Martin Truex Jr. and William Byron. In the bottom lane, Byron slid high into Truex, squeezing Blaney’s Ford into the wall.
Moments after the hit, Blaney voice his displeasure with Byron and Truex on the team radio.
“I’m gonna go kill both those mother f***ers is what I’m gonna do,” he said.
Blaney made it back to pit road, but the right-rear toe link of Blaney’s Ford was broken. The team attempted repairs on pit road and he did try to make another lap, coming out of the pits and swerving towards the car of Byron. The damage was too great however, the clock ran out according to NASCAR’s Damaged Vehicle Policy and he was done for the day.
“The replay I saw, the 24 (Byron) took up probably more racetrack than he should have after kind of rewatching it back,” Blaney said. “I thought it was just, kind of got tight, but you can’t run three-wide through there. Nobody wanted to lift and I got tagged and then kind of collected a few guys. The 24 took up more track than I would have liked, honestly. He kind of sandwiched the 19 into me, but it’s a really, really crappy end to our day.
Prior to his crash Blaney was having a decent day finishing 7th in the first stage.
“I thought we got pretty good,” Blaney said. “We came from not starting great and drove up there in the top 10 the first stage and finally got good pit stops and restarted sixth. I was ready to look forward to the second half of the race and never got a shot, and then the guy that causes it gets away scot-free. That’s what normally happens. It’s an unfortunate end to our day. I thought we could have learned some stuff today that could have helped us for the future and hopefully we can still take from what we learned today and apply it later on.”
Blaney said his swerve at Byron before he was forced to park the car wasn’t intentional. He did warn however that something like that could be in Byron’s future.
“I’m not going to hit him,” Blaney said. “I’ll save that for another time. I almost did on accident, actually. I got on the apron and the toe link was busted. I almost actually hit him when I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to show my displeasure, so we’ll see where it goes. I just wanted to show that I wasn’t happy. After watching the replay, I kind of deserve not to be happy. He used up some good track that I thought he didn’t have to use up.”
Blaney, the defending series champion was scored last on the field, his first DNF since the season opening Daytona 500.
For his part, Byron who finished 6th, saw the incident a bit differently.
“I don’t know,” Byron said. “I felt like I was ahead of them. The exit is really narrow right there. I hate if I did come up a little bit. I was surprised I was even in that spot. I felt like I would never get to the bottom of a three-wide there, but the lane was there into (turn) one and my car turned really good. I got almost clear of Martin (Truex Jr.), and then yeah, I hate that it happened. I don’t want to crash, especially that early in the race, so I didn’t really expect that to happen. I probably could have given a little more room, it just gets really, really tight right there.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.