Blaney Earns Top-10 in Third NNS Start of 2013
November 10, 2013
THE RACE
Service Master 200 at Phoenix International Raceway
Saturday, November 9, 2013
THE RESULTS
The No. 48 AutoZone Ford
Driven By: Ryan Blaney
Start Position: 9
Finish Position: 10
Status: Running
Current Series Position: N/A
THE RACE REVIEW
• Ryan Blaney made his third NASCAR Nationwide Series start of the season by qualifying the No. 48 AutoZone Ford Mustang in the ninth position for the ServiceMaster 200 at Phoenix International Raceway.
• As the race went green, Blaney settled into position and started reporting to crew chief Kevin Buskirk that the car was extremely loose both in corner entry and exit.
• After the first round of pit stops, Blaney reported that the handling of the AutoZone Ford Mustang was much better and he moved his way into seventh.
• Blaney ran seventh for 40 laps in the mid-portion of the race.
• Blaney reported that the car couldn’t go on restarts, and after just one caution in the first 100 laps of the race, the second half of the race featured several caution flags and eventual restarts.
• Each time Blaney would fall back to 11th, he would be able to drive back into the top-10 a few laps later.
• Despite being loose early in the race, the AutoZone Ford got extremely tight late, keeping Blaney from making any major moves to gain track position. As a result, Blaney would come home 10th as the checkers flew.
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING
RYAN BLANEY - NO. 48 AUTOZONE FORD
IT SEEMED LIKE YOU NEVER GOT A CHANCE TO GET THE CAR RIGHT ALL DAY LONG.
“I wish we had more time because I thought we were a little bit better than that in practice, but we got in the race and we were fighting between loose-in and tight in the middle, and that’s one of the worst things to have because you try to fix one and it makes the other one worse. It’s very difficult to fix, but we kind of ran eighth to 11th all day and then 10th, but I was really struggling on restarts. We had those four or five restarts right in a row and I was really tight and couldn’t get going, so I got passed by the 18 and couldn’t keep up. By the end of that last run I thought we were decent, but it just took so long to come in that we lost so much ground to people. I can’t be too disappointed with that because it’s a top-10 with a group of guys we just threw together at the last minute, so I’m pretty happy with these guys and we got a decent finish for AutoZone.”