Blaney Rises Late For Pocono Cup Series Triumph

Ryan Blaney celebrates with a burnout after winning Sunday at Pocono Raceway. (HHP/Chris Owens photo)

LONG POND, Pa. – Seven years after earning his first NASCAR Cup Series victory at Pocono Raceway, Ryan Blaney collected a second trophy from the ‘Tricky Triangle’ Sunday afternoon.

Blaney took the top spot exiting pit road during the final round of stops at lap 117 and controlled the remaining distance, leading the final 44 laps of the Great American Getaway 400 presented by VisitPA.com en route to his second win in the last five races.

It continued a resurgent summer for the defending Cup Series champion, who went winless for the first four months of the season before first breaking through in June at Iowa Speedway.

Now, Blaney becomes the fifth multi-time winner of the season and has his name back in the championship conversation heading toward the playoff reset.

“Things are really falling into place for us,” said Blaney after climbing from his No. 12 Wabash Ford Mustang Dark Horse on the frontstretch. “We’ve gotten to a great place on speed, the last two months especially, and just had a couple races slip away from us earlier in the year that we had a good shot at winning.

“Today it was nice to stick to the plan, get our track position at the end, and have it all come together. So cool to win here again.”

Blaney’s victory snapped a 13-year winless drought for Team Penske at Pocono and completed a banner day for owner Roger Penske, whose team also won Sunday’s NTT IndyCar Series race at Iowa Speedway with driver Will Power.

A day that seemed largely procedural during the first two stages – with the only major conversations being pit strategy and fuel – turned messy in the final stage, with four of the race’s eight cautions occurring inside the final 46 laps.

The first of those set the stage for the run to the finish, after Todd Gilliland hit the turn-one wall with a broken brake rotor that led to a flat right-front tire.

That yellow on lap 115 led to all the frontrunners hitting pit road for the final time, with Kyle Larson originally winning the race off pit road before being dinged with a penalty for speeding in section seven.

Larson fell to the tail of the lead lap as a result, handing the lead to Blaney for the ensuing restart.

Blaney easily cleared his competition when the green flag waved, but a seven-car crash broke out in turn one after Corey LaJoie turned Kyle Busch on approach to the corner.

Busch sailed back across the track surface, collecting Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Harrison Burton, and Ryan Preece, among others. It ended the day for those four and put a continued damper on Busch’s season.

Next was a skirmish exiting turn one on the lap-127 restart that followed, with Michael McDowell trying to go four-wide before bouncing off the outside wall and down into Zane Smith. Smith then spun down and tagged John Hunter Nemechek, with both drivers ultimately nosing into the inside SAFER Barrier.

Blaney was perfect through both of those restarts, but the competition had one final chance to pounce after polesitter Ty Gibbs lost an engine with 28 laps left.

Alex Bowman restarted on the front row with Blaney, but didn’t get enough of a push from Hendrick Motorsports teammate William Byron to challenge for the lead into turn one.

That left Blaney alone out front to build and manage a large gap over the remaining 23 laps, while seven-time Pocono winner Denny Hamlin ultimately passed Bowman for runner-up honors coming to seven to go.

Hamlin had nothing for Blaney, however, and fell 1.312 seconds short in the end.

“We ran out of time; that’s just part of it,” lamented Hamlin. “Track position is such a big thing. When the 12 [Blaney] pitted early on that stage that we won, that put them in front of us and I knew it was going to be hard to pass. Not enough laps of green there toward the end.

“Hats off to Ryan on a great run. He kept great pace up there toward the front,” he added. “It was really hard for me to even try to get close to reeling him in.”

Bowman finished third ahead of Byron and Joey Logano, with Tyler Reddick, Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr., Chase Elliott, and Bubba Wallace closing the top 10.

Larson came back to 13th after his speeding penalty in a disappointing day for the 2021 champion.

An attrition-filled afternoon saw 13 drivers fail to finish, with nine of those retiring due to crash damage.

The eight cautions slowed the pace for 34 laps, leading to a diminished average race pace of 123.722 mph, with the 400-mile distance completed in three hours, 13 minutes, and 59 seconds.

Next on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule is the 30th anniversary Brickyard 400, with stock cars returning to the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval for the first time in four years.

Broadcast coverage is slated for Sunday, July 21 at 2:30 p.m. ET, live on NBC, the IMS Radio Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.