Throughout the 2016 Sprint Cup season, Ryan Blaney and the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane team have been able to get some lucky breaks when they needed them.
On Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Blaney and his blue Quick Lane Ford Fusion were able to race among the top 15 for most of the Combat Wounded Coalition 400.
But just past the halfway point of a race that was running under a torrid pace, Blaney was battling to remain on the lead lap.
Luck, however, was not on his side this time, as he was passed by the leader on lap 118, only to see the caution flag fly just two laps later. If the caution had flown just a bit sooner, he’d have been able to remain on the lead lap.
From that point on, the opportunities to regain a spot on the lead lap were limited. Still, Blaney had managed to race his way from 24th to 21st for a restart seven laps shy of the scheduled completion of the race.
On the restart, drivers began wrecking ahead of Blaney. He made what appeared to be the correct move to avoid being involved, but Ryan Newman’s car slid into his path, and the collision ended Blaney’s run.
His 36th-place finish dropped him two spots to 19th in the driver standings and in a difficult position to compete for a berth in the Chase for the Sprint Cup with six regular season races left to run before the start of the championship-deciding Chase. He’s now 22 points behind 15th place, which as of now is the final spot eligible for a berth in the Chase.
“I thought we had a decent car,” Blaney said. “We kind of put ourselves in a hole, and we were trying to fight back from that, and this [crash] just made a bad day worse.”
“We’ll just go to Pocono next week and try to get better.”
Team co-owner Eddie Wood also was looking forward to putting Indianapolis in the rear-view mirror and getting a fresh start in the Pennsylvania 400 at Pocono Raceway.
“It was just a long, tough day,” Wood said. “Everything was OK the first part of the race, but the breaks didn’t go our way after that.”
“We were really close to getting the kind of breaks we’ve been fortunate to get the past couple of weeks, but it just wasn’t our day. Ryan was just a lap away from getting the free pass, and then got caught up in a wreck at the end.”
“It’s been a good season so far, and even at Indianapolis we were able to generate a lot of awareness for Quick Lane’s scholarship program for veterans.”
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