NASCAR CUP SERIES: VERIZON 200 AT THE BRICKYARD

August 15, 2021

Ryan Blaney

Press Conference

An Interview with:

Q. Somehow in the middle of all the craziness, Ryan Blaney finishes second. How did that wind up happening, Ryan?

RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, it's a good question. You know, we weren't great all day. We kind of struggled a little bit and had a car that might have been able to run tenth or so but just kind of kept working on it.

Got a little bit better, little bit better and got a couple good restarts and kind of avoided some of the mess that happened.

Found ourselves sitting there fifth on the last restart and had a shot to win the race and just couldn't quite get to the 16 at the end there. He was a little bit better than me.

But man, that stings even more to run second here, especially trying to win for Roger and trying to make it a perfect weekend for Penske. But just survived the carnage.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed it. Thank you Menard's and Ford for what you do, and it was wild. I hope everyone liked it.

Q. How would you describe the final few restarts racing and the curbing in 5 and 6 and all the chaos that was happening? Was it almost luck where your car was that you didn't hit anything?

RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, a little bit. The thing is for the longest time in the race everyone is kind of giving and taking through that chicane. It comes down to the end of the race no one is going to give and take. You're going to try to run through this two wide, and you hit one of them bigger curbs and it upsets your car and kind of throws you off.

That's just the end of the race trying to be aggressive for everybody. You kind of figure out, okay, if I'm almost clear of you, I've got the spot, but the bad thing is if you're nose to nose, no one is going to lift.

That was just hard racing on everybody, and yeah, kind of almost lucky -- you definitely wanted to be clear before that chicane just so you didn't have any problems, but yeah, luckily we weren't in that situation where we got tore up like that and made it through.