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Hendrick Motorsports’ Ryan Blaney angry over Brickyard 400 ending

Hendrick Motorsports’ Ryan Blaney angry over Brickyard 400 ending

INDIANAPOLIS — Ryan Blaney doesn’t know who to blame for what happened. Hendrick Motorsports leadership has said no rules were broken.

When the Brickyard 400 entered overtime on Sunday, Blaney was on the outside of the lead row, Brad Keselowski was sitting on the front row and had chosen the inside position. 2021 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson was on the inside of the second row and in third place.

Blaney knew Keselowski would have to pit soon because he and his Team Penske crew had pitted eight laps before Keselowski, and Blaney’s No. 12 car was low on fuel.

But when Keselowski pitted just before the leaders passed the green flag, Larson was able to take advantage of the inside and the lead. A cluster behind the leaders caused a crash and a restart, but Blaney’s chance at victory had slipped away.

“This is (expletive) (expletive),” Blaney said on his radio. “There’s no (expletive) way. There’s no (expletive) way he’s going to move up a spot and I’m (expletive) getting screwed because somebody ran out of gas. This is (expletive) (expletive) NASCAR and you (expletive) know it and it’s changing for the better. … They gave it to him.”

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After the race restarted, Larson took a comfortable victory in overtime, while Blaney finished third behind Tyler Reddick.

“I was going to pick (Keselowski) up no matter what lane he was going to take,” Larson said. “Just hoping he would get out before we got to the restart. And trying to keep an eye on him … just to see if there were any stumbles.

“And then, yeah, he just drove down pit road and I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this is going to go exactly the way we hoped and thought it would.'”

Blaney, who won last year’s Cup Series, thought he should have won for the first time in his career at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Instead, he finished third after a crash and a careless Keselowski pitted before the restart.

“(Keselowski) runs first down pit road, he goes in and Larson goes up to the bottom,” Blaney said trackside after the checkered flag. “Then the race is over, I can’t hold on to the top. The only reason I got to the top is because the 6 (Keselowski) ran out of gas. … So I’m disappointed in that, I mean it sucks. It’s just bad luck. We did everything right to win and (Larson) had a pretty good opportunity.”

Blaney would get his second straight win after winning The Great American Gateway 400 last Sunday at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pa. It would be Blaney’s third win of the season and would tie Larson and three other drivers for the most wins in 2024.

Larson, who finished 18th in the Indianapolis 500, has four wins this NASCAR season and has passed Chase Elliot for the top spot in the standings. Blaney is fifth in the Cup standings.

“(The inside position) was really the preferred front row spot,” said Jeff Gordon, vice president of Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports team and a five-time Brickyard 400 champion. “If you can map it out or plan it out, it’s exactly the way you want to plan it out because Blaney would have loved to be on the inside.”

Blaney wasn’t mad at anyone in particular for what happened in overtime after calming down, he just feels like he and his team got an unfortunate break.

“I’m angry,” Blaney said. “I told my guys I was angry, but I don’t know who to be angry at. I mean, there’s nobody to be angry at. It’s just the luck of the race. The opportunity (Larson) had — and the difficulty we had at that time with it — killed our race. We put ourselves in a perfect spot to win, and this weird situation worked for him and killed our race.”

While no NASCAR rules were broken in the ordeal, Blaney wishes the situation had been handled differently. He believes that because Keselowski slowed down before crossing the start/finish line, the green flag could have been called from there with the cars being re-racked.

“You promote the third-placed guy before the second-placed guy,” Blaney said on the US broadcast. “It’s dumb luck. It’s heartbreaking. We did everything right today and we got unlucky. We’re not going to sleep very well tonight, I can tell you that.”

Larson added: “If I were him, maybe I would (want to re-rack the cars). The way the rule is written, that’s not (an option).”