Ryan Blaney and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Racing team started 12th and finished 11th at the Tales of the Turtles 400 at Chicagoland Speedway this afternoon but there was plenty of NASCAR Playoff excitement between the green and checkered flags.
Blaney, starting his first career NASCAR postseason run, finished Stage 1 in 15th place despite making contact with a slower car early in the race. As a result, he lost a lap to Stage 1 winner Kyle Busch who ran away with the first segment.
“We started off not great and got into it with a lapped car,” Blaney said. “That put us behind and got us a lap down.”
The Wood Brothers’ driver was still a lap behind the leader at the end of Stage 2, which he also finished 15th, but was in position to take advantage of a wave around if a caution period developed. It did, during the re-start to open Stage 3.
“We spent a long time trying to get a lap back and finally did and were able to go racing,” Blaney said. “We went the wrong way on our last adjustment and that hurt us unfortunately. We can’t hang our heads about that. A lot of other cars had problems today. It stinks we didn’t get any stage points, but maybe next week.”
Despite the missed adjustment, the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford chipped away at the cars in front of it ultimately passing for 11th place on lap 222 of 267.
Blaney heads into race No. 2 of the NASCAR Playoffs 10th on the Playoff Grid with 2,034 points.
Race No. 2 in Round 1 is the ISM Connect 300 on Sunday, Sept. 24 at 2 p.m. from New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. The race will air on NBCSN.
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