Ryan Blaney’s promising day unravels, falls short of 1st Cup win

A dominant Ryan Blaney led the most laps, won the first two stages of the O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 and appeared on his way to winning his first career race Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.

There was no victory celebration, however. Instead a series of circumstances combined with a mishap on his final pit cost Blaney and he finished 12th in the seventh Monster Energy Cup Series race of the season.

“It’s not where you want to finish,” Blaney said. “We deserved to finish third, at worst. Our car was at its worst point, a third-place car. You definitely think about that and are discouraged about that.”

Blaney’s day began to turn south when a caution for debris came out with five laps remaining in the second stage. That placed the Wood Brothers Racing team in a box: If crew chief Jeremy Bullins called Blaney to pit road, he would then restart down the running order as several drivers would inevitably stay out. But if Bullins kept Blaney on the track, he would then need to pit during the caution between the second and third stage, which would result in Blaney restarting behind those had pitted previously.

Electing to pursue the bonus points for finishing stage 10th or better, Blaney waited to pit until the between-stage caution. This dropped him to 20th on the subsequent restart -- track position he would never recoup.

First, Blaney got stalled on the restart, which allowed contenders Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Larson to get by. He was further slowed later when trying to maneuver around the lapped car of Corey LaJoie, costing him additional seconds on the track.

“It’s easy to look back on it and say, ‘Oh, we should have done this, should have done that,’” Blaney said. “Yeah, in hindsight, that was kind of a judgment call. You give up a stage win and 10 point and a bonus point for the playoffs to try to set yourself for the end of the race. We thought we had enough time after Segment 2 to try to work our way back up through there.”

Eventually Blaney would rally and was inside the top 10 when a caution waved with 33 laps remaining. But when the 23-year-old pitted he overshot his stall and had to backup before his team could service the No. 21 car.

Despite how it ended, Texas represented Blaney’s best Cup performance. He led more laps (148) on Sunday than he had in his previous 60 premier division starts (33), marking the first time a Wood Brothers driver had led more than a 100 laps in a race since Neil Bonnet led 128 laps at North Carolina Motor Speedway in 1982.

“Not a bad day for us,” Blaney said. “It’s nice to win a couple segments, but I want to lead the last lap. That’s the lap I care about, but I thought we made a big gain today as a team.”