Ryan Blaney racing the No. 12 Advance Auto Parts Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
RIDGEWAY, Va. — Ryan Blaney has shown the same competitive speed that he ended the 2023 season with in the first eight races of the 2024 season, logging four top-five finishes and one pole position coming into Martinsville Speedway this weekend.
The defending Cup Series champion added to these statistics on Sunday afternoon, securing himself a fifth-place finish during the Cook Out 400 at the shortest track that NASCAR visits. Blaney had top-10 speed early in the weekend, running ninth in Practice 1 with 46 laps. He maintained that same pace into Saturday afternoon during qualifying, running a lap time of 19.816 seconds around the 0.526-mile track for a ninth place starting position.
Blaney was able to hold onto his track position and pass Denny Hamlin in the first 15 laps of the race. The 30-year-old champion held off his competitors in eighth place until halfway through the stage on Lap 40 when he had a problem shifting and fell to 11th place. During the remaining 39 laps of the first stage, Blaney told his crew that his No. 12 Dark Horse Mustang was “doing nothing good, currently”. He was able to settle into a disappointing 12th place, just missing out on stage points at the end of Stage 1.
The Team Penske driver encountered his first real issue of the day when he had to circle back to pit road and make another pit stop on Lap 87 due to a loose wheel. After pitting for a second time and getting some much needed adjustments, Blaney restarted Stage 2 in the 24th position. After 35 laps had been completed in the second stage, Blaney came down pit road once again with the leaders.. He restarted 23rd and managed to drive to a 20th-place stage finish.
Things started to improve for Blaney and the No. 12 team when crew chief Jonathan Hassler gave Blaney only right-side tires on the pit stop before the final stage, trying to gain back track position. Blaney gained 12 spots during the blistering pit stop and restarted eighth with just over 200 laps left in the race. In the last half of the race, Blaney was able to work his way up to fifth place before the final caution of the day came out. Choosing the outside lane for the restart bumped him up to fourth, however he lost a position to Bubba Wallace in the last couple of laps and crossed the finish line in fifth place.
Following the race, Blaney gave credit to his crew chief for making calls that enabled him to get his track position back before the final stage.
“Jonathan (Hassler) got pretty creative taking rights there after the second stage,” Blaney said. “I thought that was a good call even though we had tons of laps on our stuff, we had to do something because you couldn’t pass anyone all day. He did a good job of being creative and getting us track position and then we were able to kind of work on our car once we got our track position back to what we needed it to be like so that was encouraging.”
Blaney sits fifth in points following Martinsville, tied with William Byron with 261 points and 48 points behind leader Kyle Larson. If Blaney and the No. 12 can maintain this consistency, they will without a doubt be a team to watch as the battle for the regular season championship gets closer.
