William Byron on Ryan Blaney incident: ‘I hate that happened’

In the middle of Stage 2, Ryan Blaney got into the wall on a restart, courtesy of William Byron, at least, from Blaney’s perspective. Byron didn’t try to cause an incident, but sometimes in NASCAR, you can’t avoid it.

Cautions breed cautions as they say. John Hunter Nemechek spun out with 62 laps to go in the second stage. That set up a restart where Ryan Blaney had moved into great position. Then William Byron went three-wide.

Byron was on the bottom, Martin Truex Jr. in the middle, and Blaney on the top. Blaney felt he was pinched by the 24 on the bottom bringing the 19 up the track.

Being that William Byron could be Ryan Blaney’s brother-in-law soon, this is a spicy incident all around.

“I felt like I was ahead of them and the exit, it’s really narrow right there,” Byron explained after the race, via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “I hate if I did come up a little bit but I was surprised I was in that spot. You know, I felt like I would never get to the bottom of three-wide there.

“Kind of the lane was there into one and my car turned really good and I got almost clear of Martin and then um, yeah I hate that happened. I don’t want to crash, especially that early in the race. I didn’t expect that to happen but I probably could have given a little more room and I don’t know, it gets really really tight right there.”