Ryan Blaney and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Racing team overcame several obstacles to finish the Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway in 10th place in overtime.

Blaney qualified the Wood Brothers’ iconic No. 21 sixth, and once the green flag flew, he fell steadily back as he was battling a loose race car. He finished Stage 1 in 16th place and worked his way back into the top 10 by lap 116 of the scheduled 267.

“It was a long night for sure,” Blaney said. “I thought we started off okay, but we just lost the handling there pretty early and lost track position.”

A pit road speeding penalty pushed the Wood Brothers’ car back to 22nd place while pitting after a lap-137 caution period.

“I made it worse by speeding,” Blaney added.

He worked his way up to 18th by the end of Stage 2 then stayed on the track between segments rather than pit and restarted second.

“We made a good call to stay out and get some track position back but we were falling off the pace pretty bad,” Blaney explained.

He pitted under green on lap 208 and by the time all teams had made their stops, Blaney was running in seventh. He was in 11th position a lap down for the start of the first overtime in Kentucky Speedway history.

Before the caution that ended the race, Blaney made his way into 10th place securing his seventh top-10 finish of the 2017 season.

“We fought hard and never gave up though and ended up 10th,” he said. “Not the night you want by any means. We need to go back and try to improve on it a lot. I think we battled back and the finish is not bad for how the night went.”

Blaney remains seventh in the NASCAR Playoffs standings with his Pocono win and eight playoff points.

The next stop on the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series circuit is the Overton’s 301 on Sunday, July 16, at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.