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.”
William Byron went on to finish P6 in the race. Ryan Blaney was a DNF for P36.
Ryan Blaney upset with William Byron
Even though the two have a close relationship, Blaney was not amused with what Byron did on the track. It was early in the race, relatively early, and Byron went three-wide on a restart. Blaney has every right to be upset in this situation.
Given the close relationship between the two, I’m not sure this turns into anything else. Blaney might have one little retaliation up his sleeve.
“I was just mad I ended up in the fence and wrecked,” Blaney said. “He [Byron] shoved it three-wide under us and just got tight off of [Turn] 2, got tagged and ended up getting wrecked. We kind of have every right to be mad. And he gets away scot-free. Just unfortunate. I thought we got pretty good, finally got up to sixth and really made good ground in the first stage. … We had something to work with and I was excited to start the second half of the race and just didn’t get that chance.”
A tough finish for Blaney. He is losing ground after having such a hot start to the season. As for William Byron, he gets back into the top-10 and can now build momentum going into the All-Star Race and Coca-Cola 600 in the next two weeks.
More must-reads: