Ryan Blaney and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion’s run in the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway ended prematurely during a green flag pit stop on lap 71 when the engine stalled and wouldn’t re-fire.
Blaney and the Wood Brothers’ iconic No. 21 had a strong showing in qualifying by running laps of 192.651 mph and 192.273 mph in rounds one and two, respectively, earning the 13th starting position.
Early in the race, however, Blaney reported an engine vibration and the race car started moving backward in the field. When the car stalled during the lap 71 pit stop, the team pushed the car to the garage where the decision was made to retire.
“The bright side is I feel like we had a really good car,” said Jeremy Bullins, crew chief of the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion. “We made a couple changes there to make it a better long run car and after a couple of laps it looked like it really had speed and he was starting to move back up through the field.
“(After that) it just didn’t go our way,” he continued. “Obviously, something happened with the engine. I’m not sure exactly what because it’s hard to tell what happened first, so we just got to the point where we couldn’t keep going. It’s unfortunate. We’ve got a lot of power, so we won’t complain and we’ll go on and get ready for the next one.”
The next one for Blaney, Bullins and Wood Brothers Racing is the Geico 500 on May 3 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Ford Performance PR
