After slamming into the outside wall approaching Turn 1 at Daytona International Speedway in Thursday night’s second Bluegreen Vacations Duel 150-mile qualifying race, Ryan Blaney was irate.
“Three times in a row here I’ve been right-reared by someone else’s awful push, so I’m getting pretty sick of it,” Blaney said after the wreck. “People just have to be smart…
“It’s a Duel race. Why are you shoving in the tri-oval? I don’t get it, so just a shame we have to be the one with a tore-up race car when it’s someone else’s issue.”
The reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion acknowledged on Saturday morning that pushing has become a necessary part of superspeedway racing. He just wishes that some of his fellow competitors would be more sensible about it.
“Pushing is a huge part of the speedways now, right?” Blaney said on Saturday morning. “You see it more than ever. You see it more now than… I look back and the only time you pushed more was the tandem racing, but that was like solid connection being on somebody. Now, with the bumpers kind of being round, you see drivers get out of control more.
“I think you have to push hard, and I fully understand that. I push people hard, but I try to take care of people. As the pusher, you are responsible for the guy in front of you. You have just as much a responsibility to make sure that you don’t shove the guy in front of you through somebody, and you have to understand where you have to let them go.
“If you are the third car in line, you have to let the second-place car in line go. You can’t just shove ‘em through the guy leading the top lane, ‘cause then it gets ‘bumper cars,’ and that’s when people get turned.”
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