LEBANON − Ryan Blaney broke his NASCAR Cup Series Cracker Barrel 400 pattern on June 1 and broke through with his biggest race of the year at Nashville Superspeedway.
Blaney finished 37th in Nashville with brake trouble in 2021 and then was third in 2022. He lost control and hit the wall in 2023 and did not finish and then was sixth after leading 26 laps in 2024.
This was not supposed to be his year. It had not been Blaney’s year in any way before June 1. He had five DNFs in the first 13 races.
Blaney won the Nashville NASCAR race on the 1.33-mile concrete oval for his first win of the year. His last win came on Nov. 1 at Martinsville in 2024.
“It’s been pretty rocky this year — had a lot of misfortune and down times with crappy things happening to us,” Blaney said. “It’s like, ‘What do we have to do finish these races or close one out and have things go our way. I don’t want to say this was relief, but finally nothing crazy happened and we were able to run our own race, bring the speed and do our job very, very well.”
It was the 14th career win for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion.
It came after Blaney, in the No. 12 Team Penske Ford, regained the lead after pitting for the last time and held off Carson Hocevar, who matched his career-best finish with a second-place finish. Denny Hamlin, in his 700th career start was third, 2024 Nashville race champion Joey Logano was fourth and William Byron finished fifth.
“I didn’t do anything different than I have all year,” Blaney said. “It didn’t get sideways for us. Everything kind of went like a normal race should go. We executed like we should and our speed in our car was good.
“It feels like those races for our team are hard to come by. Like nothing funky happening or nothing playing out the normal way. It’s nice it finally went that way tonight. The fastest car won the race and nothing whacky happened to keep us from winning the race.”
Blaney was definitely fast. He led for 139 of the 300 laps the last 32.
Hocevar stayed in second for long stretches, but never threatened to pass Blaney. He did not lead a lap.
Hamlin took the lead with 45 laps to go before pitting five laps later. Hamlin moved back to fifth with 34 to go and third with 25 left.
“I just couldn’t run with (Blaney) there in the super long run,” Hamlin said. “After 40 laps, I could maintain with him, but then after that he just pulled away and stretched it on us.”
Byron remained in the top five for much of the race, but never believed he had the speed to catch Blaney or Hamlin.
“I felt like our car potential was probably third, behind (Blaney) and (Hamlin),” Byron said. “We just never really got to restart with clean air. I think if we could have restarted with clean air, maybe we could have held them off, but it just seemed like we had to do too much to our car to keep up with those guys.”
Reach Mike Organ at 615-259-8021 or on X @MikeOrganWriter.
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