Following a pair of poor finishes, Ryan Blaney headed to Canadian Tire Motorsports Park this past weekend in hopes of getting his season turned around to challenge for the championship as the series heads into the latter part of the season.
“It’s been up and down,” Blaney said of his season to date pre-race. “We’ve had fast trucks, but a couple down races where we’ve lost points. The last couple of weeks haven’t been good to us as we’ve lost ground so hopefully we can turn it around here this weekend.”
While hopes were high, the weekend didn’t start off as planned as Blaney wouldn’t post the qualifying effort that he wanted, qualifying 14th for the event. However, despite that, confidence was still high for Blaney based on a solid top-five finish in last year’s event.
“We had a fast truck last year,” he commented pre-race. “It gives you a little bit of confidence in knowing that we can run well in having a good run before.”
Come race time, everything would come together as Chad Kendrick’s strategy worked out perfectly to get Blaney out front late in the race, leading to a battle with German Quiroga, with Blaney winning at the line by 0.049 seconds.
“That was a lot of fun racing with German,” Blaney said post-race. “We raced really hard and really clean. We had a problem last week and it’s ironic how we’re racing against each other for the win this week. That was awesome racing like that, and that’s how racing was like. We were going to be close on fuel and I was watching my fuel, looking every now and again, and it’d bounce to red a couple of times. Chad did a good job in playing the right strategy and getting us up front after not qualifying that good. It paid off for us.
“That was a lot of fun. We had a good truck last year and were able to run up front there, and this year we were able to get up there. We only get one road course a year and it’s so much fun to run. It’s a great environment in Canada and the fans have seen a great race two years in a row.”
It marked a great race as the fans on-hand were treated to side-by-side racing by Quiroga and Blaney throughout the final lap after Quiroga was able to close the gap through with Blaney not getting off 5b that well.
“He got to my left side and I just tried to keep myself out there. When I got into eight, I wheel-hopped a little bit and I got loose – thought I gave it away there, and luckily I didn’t,” Blaney described the battle. “He was set-up bad for 10 and I kind of committed to the cross-over and luckily we had enough drive out of the corner to get him there at the end. I thought I made a mistake there, but I was able to get the lead back.”
There were some people that wondered with how close the pair were whether a wreck would happen – repeating last year’s finish – and after their issues at Bristol. However, Blaney noted that it never crossed his mind as he had put Bristol behind him immediately.
“I don’t like to wreck people to win races,” he added. “I wasn’t going to. If I had to, I would’ve laid the bumper to him – but I would not have spun him out on purpose. That didn’t cross my mind along the last set of corners.”
Beyond having success this year in the trucks, Blaney has been running well in the Nationwide Series, highlighted by his victory at Bristol Motor Speedway.
“Nice to finally get a win in that car,” he commented. “We could’ve had a couple before that in that car as we were in position but things haven’t worked out in our favor. It’s good to finally get that car in victory lane.”
The success has led to other opportunities for the son of Dave Blaney, as it was announced earlier this year that Blaney will run some Sprint Cup Series races next year for the Wood Brothers.
“Just cool to be part of such a great team with guys like the Wood Brothers like Leonard and Glenn,” he said. “They’ve been really good to me and I think with the Penske alliance, it’s going to put them at the top where they need to be to be competitive. Very fortunate to drive for them.”
Being one of the young and upcoming drivers, Blaney has the right people around him to help him with his father Dave, Roger Penske, boss/teammate Brad Keselowski and teammate Joey Logano.
“They’re very helpful – Brad and Joey,” Blaney said. “They both got started really young and had a lot of pressure on them, espically Joey in running Cup at the age of 18. To be able to learn from them has been very beneficial and it’s been fun getting to know those guys. Whenever I run Truck, Nationwide or the couple of Cup stars, they’ve taught me a whole lot on and off the track and it’s definitely made a lot better. I’m really thankful to have great friends to lean on to get information heading into most of these NASCAR places. I’ve been very fortunate to have them.”
Though while that is the plan for next year, Blaney’s focus is right now on this year and trying to win the Camping World Truck Series Championship as he only sits 13 points behind Johnny Sauter. Blaney’s startegy is simple – keep doing what they’ve been doing thus far this year.
“The last couple of weeks we’ve struggled but we’re better than that; we’ve shown it all year,” he commented. “We’re strong and like he said, I think we can rattle off a lot of really good finishes from here to the end of the year. Just keep doing what we’re doing. A win for the team motivates these guys so much. The first one is the hardest win to get and I think they’re going to start rattling off here. Just got to stay focused and head to Chicago and go from there. We’ve done a great job all year as a team and we have to keep doing that.”
