Running a solid 12th place after 100 of 400 laps of the Citizen Soldier 400 Sunday at Dover International Speedway, Ryan Blaney and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford blew the right-front tire and made contact with the turn three wall forcing them to the garage area for extensive repairs and an eventual 38th-place finish.
“I think we just blew a right-front pretty bad,” said Blaney, who had one of the fastest cars on the track at the time of the incident. “We were running pretty good before that, and I wasn’t really getting tight, I was kind of just riding around and blew a big hole in it. We’ll have to look at it and see what happened, but it’s a shame.”
Blaney and the Wood Brothers’ iconic No. 21 Fusion started 20th on the grid and after the first pit stop had made his way to 12th by lap 53.
“We got our car pretty good that second run and were driving up through the field pretty good,” Blaney said. “I would have liked to see what we would have had if we had a couple more chances to work on it.”
After making the repairs and missing 112 circuits, the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team gamely got back on the track during the race’s 123rd lap in 40th place 112 laps behind the leader. By doing so, Blaney and company were able to gain two places on the scoring pylon to finish 38th.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t run good today, but it’s a testament to our team of not starting very good and getting a lot better in one pit stop, so that’s something we can take away.” Blaney said.
As a result, the rookie driver moves down a spot to 20th in the driver points standings.
The next race on the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule is the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Saturday, October 8, at 7 p.m..
