Ryan Blaney comes up one spot short at Bowman Gray Stadium

Ryan Blaney knows a thing or two about carving his way through the field. 

He did it in Martinsville last November in order to clinch a spot in the Championship 4, and a week later, he did it again, though he came up a spot shy of a second consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championship. 

In Sunday's Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, Blaney would be faced with one of the most difficult drives of his career, but the 2023 champion stepped up and nearly put together one of the most impressive runs in the 46-year history of the Clash. 

Mechanical issues on Saturday forced Blaney to the very back of the starting grid (23rd) for Sunday's Cook Out Clash, a race Blaney was only able to partake in due to his second-place finish in the 2024 points standings. On a tiny 0.25-mile track, starting in the back is as close to a death sentence as you can get, as the leader will be on your back bumper in a hurry. 

That didn't seem to faze Blaney, however. The No. 12 methodically moved through the pack through the race's first 100 laps and cracked the top 10 by the halfway break at lap 100. 

With the help of a few caution flags, Blaney moved past Denny Hamlin — the only challenger to race leader Chase Elliott for the first three-quarters of the race — for second on lap 147. 

For just the second time all night, Elliott's dominant Chevrolet was challenged — until Blaney made several minute mistakes in the closing laps that enabled Elliott to pull away as the two leaders trekked through lapped traffic. 

In the end, Blaney fell 1.3 seconds short of a win in the Clash and now turns his attention to chasing his first Daytona 500 victory on Feb. 16. 

"I had a blast," Blaney told Fox Sports after the race. "I was saying last year we came from last to third, (in the Clash) this year last to second. We just have to not start last and we may have a shot to win one of these things. The car was really good in the first half and the second half. I just didn't quite have enough right rear at the end to make a move on him."

Blaney began 2025 in the same way he ended 2024 — mounting a hard charge that came up one spot short of glory.