{"id":40042,"date":"2022-08-28T17:30:44","date_gmt":"2022-08-28T22:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=40042"},"modified":"2022-08-28T22:00:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T03:00:30","slug":"blaney-earns-final-cup-playoff-spot-truex-falls-just-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/28\/blaney-earns-final-cup-playoff-spot-truex-falls-just-short\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaney earns final Cup Playoff spot, Truex falls just short"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

DAYTONA BEACH – Ryan Blaney climbed out of his No. 12 Team Penske Ford Sunday afternoon at Daytona International Speedway looking simultaneously relieved and genuinely worn-out.<\/p>\n

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Ryan Blaney (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

He claimed the final 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff position after a 15th-place finish \u2013 six laps down \u2013 in the Coke Zero Sugar 400 regular season finale; he and his team turning in a tenacious performance in a race delayed a full day and then extended by a three-hour plus red flag break because of rain showers.<\/p>\n

Four multi-car accidents eliminated many other pre-race favorites. And in the end, Blaney eked out a three-point advantage in the standings over Joe Gibbs Racing\u2019s Martin Truex Jr. to claim the final 2022 Playoff position. Truex\u2019s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was eighth in the race. But the season-long math gave Blaney the Playoff opportunity, with first-time winner Austin Dillon nabbing the other Playoff position on the line.<\/p>\n

Blaney, who took a 25-point advantage into the race, was in an early accident that badly hobbled his car and ultimately prevented him from mounting any serious threat to win the race. And the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion Truex actually took the Playoff lead for much of the day following Blaney\u2019s early race incident.<\/p>\n

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Ryan Blaney (Photo by Chris Graythen\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

The race was paused with 21 laps remaining for bad weather and had it not resumed, Truex was in position to transfer into the Playoff field.<\/p>\n

But the race resumed and ultimately Blaney persevered \u2013 damaged car, laps-down and all \u2013 to earn his sixth consecutive Playoff bid.<\/p>\n

It was day of high competition and high emotion with the Playoff lineup shifting often. And Blaney, 28, contends it was actually his ability to temper his emotions \u2013 having dinner, watching golf on television and truly chilling out during that long red flag delay \u2013 that may have been the difference on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s easy to kind of freak out and things like that, but you just have to reel yourself in,” Blaney said of not giving up despite the early race misfortune \u201cIt\u2019s out of your hands at that point, there wasn\u2019t really anything we could do. You hope another winner wins the race or that we could still beat Martin on points.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just try to stay calm and accept the fact, it might not happen. And it was nothing we did wrong, just got caught up in someone else\u2019s mess. I\u2019ve been saying that all week. You can get caught up in someone else\u2019s mess and that\u2019s what happened to us. I try to stay optimistic you make a run at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you try to stay positive about those things,” Blaney continued. \u201cYou never know what could happen. Our day was not well from the start, but you just try to keep your head up and stay in the game and that\u2019s what we did. They did a good job of trying to fix it best they could even though we weren\u2019t fast, we stayed running and that\u2019s really what made the difference for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex, meanwhile, climbed out of his Toyota understandably mired in the other end of emotion. He led Blaney by 12-points for the transfer position when the race was red-flagged. Had NASCAR not re-started the race, Truex would be racing for a title.<\/p>\n

The two were tied, then exchanged the lead by a point, then ultimately Blaney took it for good with that so-slim three-point difference in the thrilling, closing handful of laps.<\/p>\n

Truex said the damage his car suffered earlier in another of the mid-race multi-car accidents, really left him unable to race for the victory in the closing laps without any drafting partners.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust had too much damage at the end, just couldn\u2019t keep up,” Truex said. \u201cThe only chance I had was when they got side-by-side and started checking up the line then I could get back up to them. But just too much damage to have the speed to do anything at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe really did a good job to make up 22 points in one race,” he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a big gain. Unfortunately, it just wasn\u2019t enough today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bass Pro Shops Toyota was really fast, and we ran, what I thought was a smart race, just wrong place at wrong time and you know 30 cars out here today could say that. Just frustrating. We run well and then get wrecked and at the end of the day, still have a somewhat decent finish, but it really doesn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Blaney, who was ranked third in the championship standings before the Playoff re-set, will race for his first title. He has eight top-five, and 12 top-10 finishes in the opening 26 races. Truex was sixth in points before the Daytona race. Both drivers are still competing for their first wins of the season.<\/p>\n

The 10-race elimination-style NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs begin next week with the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway next Sunday (6 p.m. ET on USA Network, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve still got a lot to race for and to go win a couple races would be awesome,” Truex said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Holly Cain NASCAR Wire Service DAYTONA BEACH – Ryan Blaney climbed out of his No. 12 Team Penske Ford Sunday afternoon at Daytona International Speedway looking simultaneously relieved and genuinely worn-out. He claimed the final 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff position after a 15th-place finish \u2013 six laps down \u2013 in the Coke Zero […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":29807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[287,16,435],"class_list":["post-40042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-daytona-international-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-ryan-blaney"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/NCS_Dega_Blaney_062220-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-apQ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40042"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40057,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40042\/revisions\/40057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}