Ryan Blaney thought he had NASCAR Darlington win in his bag before late caution

Ryan Blaney was convinced he had done enough to win Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington before a late caution period handed the advantage to Denny Hamlin.

Penske driver Blaney rapidly closed in on race leader Tyler Reddick in the closing stages of the Goodyear 400, overtaking him on the inside with just four laps to run.

However, moments after he had completed his first lap in the lead, Kyle Larson wrecked the #4 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet after a spin, triggering the final caution of the day.

Blaney headed into the pits like the rest of the field but returned on track in fourth place as the race went into overtime.

The 2023 Cup Series champion ultimately took the chequered flag in fifth place, behind the 23XI Racing Toyota of Reddick that he had overtaken just before the caution period.

“Oh, no. I thought we finally had the race won. I don’t really know. Have to watch the replay of how that yellow came out, watch it back.
 
“We did a good job. Great strategy call of kind of running long, giving us time to get down, run down the 45 [Reddick], a lot of those guys that short pitted. It was a great call.
 
“Never really got to control the race. I feel like nothing ever really went our way. Pit road, we got to work on a little bit. Caution coming out during the cycle set us way back. I felt like we just kept making up spots.
 
“Really proud of the 12 folks for giving me a fast car. Just really wasn’t meant to be. I really wanted and would have liked to have won here. That would have been really neat. Just wasn’t meant to be. Proud of the effort. We’ll keep plugging along.”

The crew of the #12 Ford brought Blaney into the pits on lap 247 to give him fresher tyres for the final part of the race.

It was this strategic call that allowed him to hunt down Reddick and eventually pass him to claim the race leader.

“Honestly, really, when I got to like fifth, I was like, ‘Dude, he’s really far away. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get there,’ but those guys just hit a cliff, and I just never did,” Blaney explained. 

“I kind of kept trucking, and when I got to second and it was, like, nine to go, I was kind of tongue-out for like four laps, but then I’m like, I think I’m gonna have enough.”

Blaney said he would have been able to ‘ride to the sunset’ without the final restart, such was his advantage over the rest of the field before the last round of caution-induced pitstops.

“If the caution didn’t come out, I thought we had one easily,” he said. “We were so much faster on newer tyres. It was a great strategy running long. Those guys short-pitted, and they were struggling real bad.

“I thought if we could have just got off [Turn] 2 with the lead and caution didn’t come out, I thought I’d have kind of ride off the sunset.

“Just, not how it worked unfortunately and lost the lead on pit road, lost a front-row starting spot, and never had a shot.”

While strategy played a big role in propelling Blaney into the lead, the Penske driver lost a total of 20 positions on the pitroad over the course of the race.

Early in the race, the 31-year-old stopped too far down his pit box and lost valuable time, while an issue with the left-hand side time compromised him further at the end of Stage 2.

He then dropped from first to fourth in the final pitstop under caution.

“Yeah, we’ve just got some things to work on, you know?” he said. “I make mistakes. I screw up a lot. Those guys don’t have great stops every now and then. It’s just part of the sport.

“But you know, they’ll go to work, they’ll figure it out, where do they need to improve, just like we do with the race car. Where have we got to improve on that? So those guys do the same thing, and we’ll try to come back even better.”