Ryan Blaney came from nearly three seconds back to challenge teammate Joey Logano for the Phoenix race win and Cup Series championship, but he simply ran out of time to get the job done. At the checkered flag, he was 0.330s away from becoming a back-to-back NASCAR Cup Series champion, and he was worn out. The AMR Safety Team tended to him on pit road after the race.
"I was tired, man," said Blaney. "I was driving hard and huffing and puffing and felt like I was going to pass out after the race. I was working hard trying to close the gap down. There were a lot of similarities to last week and just didn't quite get there this week."
The critical moment came on a Lap 259 restart when William Byron controlled the race with two Hendrick Motorsports teammates at his back. While Logano made a brilliant three-wide pass for the lead, Blaney remained trapped behind two of the Hendrick drivers. That turned out to be the winning moment, as Logano never relinquished the lead again
Blaney fought hard with Kyle Larson and later Byron, but by the time he cleared them both, Logano was 2.3 seconds up the road with just over 20 laps to go.
"Just got bottled up," said Blaney of that pivotal restart. "I took sixth. I thought the top was probably the better row, personally, and just got put in kind of a weird aero spot. A lot of guys washed up in front of me there through 1 and 2, and Joey kind of got clear, and then I only got to fourth.
"That was the outcome. Just Joey got to the lead pretty quick with how the restart went, and it worked out for him. By the time I settled in, I was fourth and had to work my ass off to try to get by the 5 and the 24 and run Joey down, and then I had nothing left. Everything was spent on that car.
"I knew when I was running him down, I'm going to get there, but I didn't have anything once I got there. Once you get in dirty air and they can start kind of guessing where you're going, it just makes it that much harder. Yeah, just the restart, if I would have just been closer, if I would have came out second or so, I wouldn't have had to work as hard and come from as far back and maybe would have had a little bit better shot."
Just needed to get out front
While passing was difficult, Blaney was one of the stronger drivers on a long run, making it work better than most by driving in deep on corner entry. However, it was never going to be enough against a driver with clean air.
"I just -- I wish I ever got control of the race. Like I never got the lead. I got the lead once, and I think the green flag stops happened or I got the lead at the end of Stage 2, Stage 2 ended, and then I got the lead back -- well, I finally passed Joey for second in the third stage when the green flag cycle happened, Bell pitted, I came out second -- I just never got the lead.
"I felt like if I got the lead, I'm gone. But it just didn't play out. Car was great, and Jonathan and those guys did a great job of getting us to where we needed to be."
