(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden
Ryan Blaney’s 2020 run at Kentucky Speedway was a case of one bump after the other – both metaphorically and literally in the final lap.
Blaney found himself embroiled in what was then a three-wide battle for the lead on the penultimate late of Sunday’s Quaker State 400. He’d restarted in third, but accidental contact between Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. in the battle for the lead slowed them up and allowed Blaney to make a drive under the pair in Turn 3 and emerge alongside them in a battle for the win.
Running on the bottom lane and looking to run the shortest possible line around the track, Blaney dove to the apron while going down the front stretch. But while he was down there he hit a sizable bump, knocking the car off-balance and sending him up into Harvick.
The pair collided, killing their momentum and requiring them both to make saves. That allowed Truex to clear them both, but he was overtaken himself by rookie Cole Custer in the high lane.
“Someone rang the horn when I was mid-jump, and I was just hanging on,” Blaney said of the hit with Harvick. “I kicked right, and I thought I was going to go right in front of the field, but luckily we were able to halfway straighten it out.”
Custer went on to claim his first NASCAR Cup Series win. Harvick fell to fourth, while Blaney followed two spots back in sixth.
The Team Penske star claimed he had no idea a bump that large lied in the apron section of the track when he made the move, claiming it was similar to moves he makes at other tracks.
“We were battling for the lead coming to the white, I was just trying to get away from those three guys,” Blaney said. “I was just trying to get some room between us and not get side-drafted or slowed down. I couldn’t necessarily see them, but I was told I was bottom four and that was for the lead, so obviously, I’m just going to get away from him as much as possible because I felt like they were all going to slow each other down and maybe I’d have an edge into (Turn) 1.
“People do that all the time, cut to the apron on every type of racetrack that’s available, just none of the other ones have ramps on them. I’m not honestly sure if there’s an actual drain there or not. I don’t think there is. If there is a drain right there, it’s really dumb to put a drain right there because it’s just on the apron. I think it’s just a big bump.
“I don’t understand how you can repave a place a handful of years ago, and there’s a jump higher than any track we go to, but yeah, I didn’t even know it was there. We don’t run on it.”
The conclusion of Sunday’s race was just the latest in a string of setbacks for Blaney, who might have had the best car but struggled to get it into clean air at the front of the front.
Blaney drove through the field after fading back a few spots from his 11th-place starting position. He was one of the few drivers capable of overtaking and moving through the field as struggled to deal with aero wash on a track that largely ran one-lane.
The 26-year-old was running inside of the top-five early on when he car popped out of gear. He caught it, but lost a handful of spots and had to manually hold the shifter in the correct gear through Turns 1 & 2 throughout the rest of the afternoon.
“It wasn’t painful, it was just that my hand was going numb,” Blaney said of the shifter issue. “It was just vibrating so much that your hand would just go numb after a little bit, so you’d just shake it out and stretch it out.
Blaney recovered from that to chase down the dominant Aric Almirola and take our the lead on Lap 138, but a poorly-timed caution allowed Brad Keselowski to snag the lead from Blaney amid a green-flag pit sequence on Lap 151 and take Stage 2.
On the non-preferred inside lane, Blaney lost second to Martin Truex Jr. when Stage 3 kicked off on Lap 168. He spent the majority of Stage 3 chasing Truex from there, with the New Jersey native passing Keselowski for the lead on Lap 232.
Late cautions gave Blaney a final chance at the win, and he even led the field to green for the penultimate restart on Lap 255 after having a slim lead over Truex when Jimmie Johnson wrecked right at the start of the prior restart. But Harvick jumped past both Blaney and Truex from third to take the top spot in Turn 2.
One final caution on Lap 262 set the field up for the final run to the checkered flag, leaving Blaney with his final desperate dive to the apron and a chance encounter with a bump that derailed his attempt to steal a second 2020 win.
