Ryan Blaney has New Hampshire figured out, apparently .
The 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion turned the final 63 laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway into a demonstration of patience, tire management and, most importantly, the ancient racing art of making the other guy’s strategy look like a terrible idea.
Blaney held off Bubba Wallace by 0.586 seconds to score his third victory of the 2026 season and his second consecutive win at the 1.058-mile Loudon bullring.
Last year, Blaney led 116 laps on his way to victory. Sunday, he needed only 115.
Apparently, he has decided there is no reason to overcomplicate things.
The win also came with a rather large exclamation point heading into the final race of the regular season. Blaney didn’t just beat the field. He showed exactly how a race can be won — or lost — on pit road.
After winning Stage 2, Blaney suffered a slow pit stop that dropped him all the way to 14th for the start of the final stage. But when the field pitted under caution on Lap 226, Blaney and his team rolled the dice on two tires.
It was a gamble.
It was also the right one.
Blaney led a group of five cars taking two tires, while Wallace and the other four-tire takers followed behind. When the green flag waved with 63 laps remaining, it became a very simple experiment: Could four fresh tires overcome two slightly less fresh tires?
For most of the afternoon, the answer appeared to be yes.
Eventually, though, Wallace discovered that catching Blaney and passing Blaney were two very different jobs.
Wallace closed to within half a second in the closing laps, but a tire lockup with fewer than five laps remaining cost him valuable ground. Blaney managed the traffic, managed his tires and managed Wallace’s increasingly desperate attack to bring home the victory.
“Just tried to manage the lap traffic and manage the tire, not make a mistake,” Blaney said.
That sounds simple.
At New Hampshire, it isn’t.
The race began with the sort of weather that makes everyone in the garage wonder why they ever chose racing for a living. The field started on wet-weather tires, and rain intensified during the pace laps. Before NASCAR could even officially start the race, Carson Hocevar spun.
Cooler heads prevailed, and NASCAR brought the field onto pit road to wait out the shower.
After a little more than an hour, the cars returned to the track. Tyler Reddick, who started from the pole, finally took the green.
He lasted less than a lap.
Reddick spun in the same spot where Hocevar had gone around, collecting Denny Hamlin in the process. Both cars were able to continue, but both were sent to the rear.
William Byron inherited the lead on the Lap 6 restart and held it until Lap 26, when Shane van Gisbergen decided New Hampshire looked rather agreeable to him.
By Lap 30, SVG had built a five-second lead.
Naturally, NASCAR immediately found a way to ruin his afternoon.
A Lap 40 caution for a non-competitive pit stop brought the field down pit road to change from wet-weather tires to slicks. Because the caution was non-competitive, van Gisbergen retained the lead for the restart on Lap 55.
Then Ricky Stenhouse Jr. spun.
Green came back out on Lap 57, and Kyle Larson wasted little time. Starting third, Larson charged to the front and took the lead away from van Gisbergen.
SVG gradually faded, and when Stage 1 ended on Lap 70, Larson led Christopher Bell across the line. Van Gisbergen was ninth.
Ryan Preece and five other drivers stayed out at the stage break, putting Preece in front for the start of Stage 2.
That lasted until Lap 85, when Hocevar — buried in the field after stalling on pit road — was trying to fight his way forward. Contact with Connor Zilisch sent Hocevar spinning, and the resulting accordion effect collected Joey Logano. Austin Dillon gave Logano an additional shove for good measure.
Preece retained the lead for the Lap 91 restart, but Josh Berry, who had pitted at the stage break and had two fresh tires, needed only one lap to get around him.
And suddenly, we had a rematch.
Berry had been one of the stars of last year’s New Hampshire race, only to have his afternoon derailed when he and van Gisbergen got together. This time, Berry looked every bit as comfortable as he had a year earlier.
He led from Lap 92, with Blaney tucked behind him and applying pressure.
The two ran together through a round of green-flag pit stops, but Blaney wasn’t going away. On Lap 148, after spending much of the stage stalking Berry, Blaney finally slipped past and took the lead.
He never gave it back before the end of Stage 2.
Blaney won the stage ahead of Berry and Wallace, but the celebration was short-lived. Wallace won the race off pit road, while Blaney’s slow stop dropped him to 14th.
The guy who had just won the stage suddenly had a lot of work to do.
Wallace led the field to green for the final stage on Lap 194. Berry needed only one lap to reclaim the lead.
He held it until Lap 202, when Hocevar spun again. Most of the leaders stayed out, while Hamlin, Bell and Blaney were among those who pitted.
Berry once again led the field when the green flag returned on Lap 208, fighting Wallace for position before Wallace reclaimed the lead on Lap 223.
Preece took advantage of the battle and moved into second.
Then came the caution that changed everything.
On Lap 226, Riley Herbst was sent hard into the outside wall entering Turn 3 after contact with Michael McDowell. Zilisch, who had nowhere to go, slammed into Herbst’s stopped car.
This time, everyone came to pit road.
Blaney’s crew gave him two tires.
Wallace took four.
Blaney won the race off pit road.
And NASCAR had accidentally created a very expensive science experiment.
The green flag waved on Lap 234, but the caution came back out four laps later when Byron’s left-rear tire decided it had served its purpose and departed the vehicle. Byron had been running inside the top five.
When the race finally returned to green, there were 63 laps remaining.
Blaney’s two tires were at the front.
Wallace’s four fresh tires were behind him.
For a while, Wallace looked as though he might prove the conventional wisdom correct. Blaney stretched the lead to nearly two seconds, but Wallace steadily reeled him back in through traffic.
Then came the lockup.
Wallace’s left-front developed a big vibration, and the late charge was effectively over.
“It did,” Wallace said when asked whether the lockup had sealed the result. “I picked up a big vibration on the left front. That was kind of it.”
Blaney crossed the finish line first.
Wallace was second.
Berry, who had led 73 laps — second only to Blaney — settled for third after another strong New Hampshire performance. Bell was fourth and Larson, the Stage 1 winner, rounded out the top five.
Ty Gibbs finished sixth, Hamlin seventh, Reddick recovered to eighth, and Preece and Noah Gragson completed the top 10.
For Wallace, second place was impressive considering what he described as one of the worst-handling cars he has driven this season.
“One of the worst driving cars we ever started. The worst driving car we had this year and I finished second,” Wallace said.
There is a certain cruel logic to New Hampshire. Sometimes the car is brilliant. Sometimes it is dreadful. And sometimes, apparently, it is dreadful enough to finish second.
Wallace credited his 23XI Racing team for keeping him pointed in the right direction.
“We fought, man,” he said. “Had a nice day just by myself, regrouping. Got the head right. I knew I had to fight all day.”
Blaney, meanwhile, has turned New Hampshire into his personal lobster delivery service.
The victory was his second straight at Loudon, and he already knows what comes with it.
“I look forward to getting another lobster,” he said.
Asked what he planned to do with the second one, Blaney didn’t need much time to think about it.
“Put it right up next to the first one.”
That may be the most New Hampshire thing imaginable.
More importantly, Blaney heads to Daytona second in the standings with momentum on his side and Team Penske rolling.
“You always want to continue momentum,” Blaney said. “Team Penske has been on a heck of a tear the last couple months.”
Now comes Daytona International Speedway, the final race of NASCAR’s regular season, where the final 16 spots in the Chase will be locked in.
And if you’re looking for the defending winner of that race, well, there’s a fairly obvious place to start.
Ryan Blaney.
New Hampshire may belong to him now.
Daytona, however, has a rather different way of settling arguments.
RACE RESULTS
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour 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, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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