Ryan Blaney did almost everything he had to do in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway.
He won both stages, led 150 laps and appeared to have the car to earn his second victory of the season.
Except for one thing, which turned out to be his downfall. In the final stage, he and his team played the hole early under the green. The bet was not worth it. Several laps later, when others played under caution and obtained newer tires, Blaney returned to position 15 when he made the wave with about 20 laps and started behind the cars that had faced each other.
At the time, he said there wasn’t enough time to get back to the front, letting him settle for seventh place.
It was just another episode where Blaney and his team fell short this season. Instead of multiple wins, he has won.
“I thought we had a good strategy for the last stage and the caution went maybe eight to 10 laps before all the other guys who were on this different strategy had to go to the pits,” Blaney said. “So, a disappointing ending for sure. Dominant car all day, especially long races, but very proud of our effort. It’s unfortunate how it ended for us. “
Meanwhile, Austin Dillon won the race, and Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin continue to lead the Cup Series with four wins each.
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“I don’t know what the opposite of Golden Horseshoe is, but we found it,” Blaney said. “I was just unlucky all year long. We have had really fast cars, they are only precautions when we do not need them or just bad breaks.
“We feel like we should have four or five wins right now, we’ve had the cars to do it, it just doesn’t go well for us.” But I am proud of the speed we have. I feel like we can compete with (Harvick and Hamlin) and some of the best guys who have had all those wins this year.
“We simply must be able to get things going our way. So I feel like we’re doing a lot of things right, it’s just some bad circumstances.
“It is frustrating when it happens. You’re like, man, bad rest after bad rest. Gosh, what the hell do we have to do to get things going our way?
“There really are two ways to approach it. You can be upset and upset that things are not going your way, or you can think of the good things, that our cars are really fast and we have been able to win many races this year, it just hasn’t played for us. You just have to focus on what you need to do and that is to keep bringing fast race cars, if you keep running up front and leading laps, I hope and believe that things will eventually go our way. “
Then Blaney concluded on Sunday’s result: “I already got over it. I go to bed and when I wake up, I look forward to Kansas (Thursday night). “
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