Blaney’s Southern 500 Ends Abruptly After Lap 3 Crash

Ryan Blaney (David Rosenblum/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

DARLINGTON, S.C. – Ryan Blaney’s NASCAR Cup Series regular season came to an abrupt and premature end just two laps into Sunday night’s 75th Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway.

Blaney was running eighth starting lap three at the 1.366-mile, egg-shaped oval when Truex charged the entry to turn one ahead of him a bit too hard.

Truex’s No. 19 Bass Pro Shops Toyota Camry XSE just barely brushed the left rear of sixth-running William Byron’s car ahead, which got Truex sideways and out of shape near the center of the corner.

As Truex tried to catch his race car, he appeared to overcorrect and shot back up the groove, slamming into the side of Blaney’s neon-yellow machine and pinching it hard into the outside SAFER Barrier.

Truex was able to drive his wounded machine back to pit road, while Blaney’s car slid down to rest on the apron in turn one, but both drivers incurred too much damage to continue on.

Despite an initially-worrisome radio transmission from Blaney that seemed to reference some immediate pain before he climbed out of the No. 12 Menards Ford Mustang Dark Horse, the defending Cup Series champion was checked and released from the infield care center before speaking with TV and reporters.

“I’m alright,” Blaney noted. “I saw Martin get loose and kind of hit the 24 [Byron]. I thought he was going to spin to the bottom, so I kind of gassed up to get around him, but between terrible timing and then he overcorrected, we were right there … and I couldn’t avoid him.

“Gosh, I hate it to wreck on lap two. But it’s one of those things,” he continued. “You think he’s going to spin low and then his rears hooked up and he just came up. I hate it for everybody on our Menards Ford team, because I thought our car was great and [we] just didn’t even get to run any laps.”

The good news was that Blaney was locked into the Cup Series playoff field long before walking into Darlington this weekend, after wins at Iowa Speedway in June and Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway in July.

The bad news? He dropped from fourth to sixth in the aggregate regular season standings on the final night before the playoffs. That caused two bonus playoff points to slip through Blaney’s fingers because his finishing position among the top 10 in total regular season points diminished at the last possible second.

Blaney isn’t focused on the bad, though, He’s still prepared to go after his second straight Cup Series title and potentially become the first driver to win back-to-back premier series titles since Jimmie Johnson won five in a row from 2006-’10. It would be the first successful title defense of the elimination era if so.

“Hopefully next week goes a little bit better,” Blaney concluded.

The NASCAR Cup Series playoffs begin Sunday, Sept. 8 at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway with the Quaker State 400 delivered by Wal-Mart, the first race in the Round of 16.

Broadcast coverage at the 1.54-mile quad-oval is slated for 3 p.m. ET, live on USA, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.