NASCAR CUP SERIES: CHAMPIONSHIP

November 10, 2024

Ryan Blaney

Pit Lane Interview

Q. It looked like you worked awfully hard to get your teammate there at the end.

RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, just worn out really and just couldn't quite get there. And tried really hard to do so, just restart didn't really work out and just got too far away from me and took me a while to pass a couple guys and just could never get by Joey. Yeah, ran out of time.

But congrats to him, congrats to the 22 team and Pennzoil and Ford. They put together a great playoffs, and we're happy. If we're going to race somebody, I'm happy it was him for the championship, and happy to be one-two for Roger, three in a row for Roger, super amazing, and Ford.

But on my side, I hate it for Menards, Advance Auto Parts, Bodyarmor, Dex Imaging, Wabash, the Wurth group, everybody who really puts a lot of effort into our program.

Just super fast, just didn't quite have enough there at the end. At least a Penske car won it, but heck of a battle. I hope the fans enjoyed it, and hopefully we come back even stronger next year.

Q. It was a great show. Once you got clear and started going to work, did you think you had him?

RYAN BLANEY: Yeah, I didn't know. I had to work really hard to get by the 5 and the 24. Joey was pretty far away, and I was working really hard to try to get to Joey. I was kind of nervous that if I ended up getting close to him, a lot of my stuff would be burned off of it, and it kind of was. But didn't have a choice. I couldn't really wait.

Yeah, just took too long. The restart didn't play out for us. I feel like if I came out behind Joey and didn't have two cars in between us that I had to pass, I would have been able to have a better shot. But just the restart didn't work out, and that's just the way it goes sometimes.

So proud of the 12 team for their effort and really, really happy with our year, and like I said, really happy for Roger Penske and Joey Logano and Paul Wolfe and all those guys and try to restack and go after it again.