“No one expected that”: Ryan Blaney makes his feelings known on the ‘wild’ and unpredictable Bristol race

NASCAR Cup Series driver Ryan Blaney thought Sunday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway was quite unpredictable. In his own words, the 500-lap event was “wild”. And it was all due to extreme tire wear plaguing the teams and forcing them to revisit their race strategies.

Goodyear used a new compound for the right side of the Cup cars, one of the softest tires the company introduced for stock car racing. They kept the left side as is, hoping that the tires would undergo just the perfect amount of tire wear.

It did work in practice when the track temperature was more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But Bristol was a night race. The track was cooler at night, thus yielding unexpected results. Drivers started losing their tires as early as 30 laps into the race. Reflecting on the same during a post-race interview, Ryan Blaney, who finished fourth, said,

“The tires were interesting. No one expected that. I guess that’s what they want. It practices one way and then it races a completely different way, so we just tried to manage tires and ran a bunch of laps under caution, and I thought we were pretty good all night and glad to get a good finish.”

“It was a wild night. I wish we wouldn’t have run so many laps under caution,” he added.

Bristol finish was Blaney’s 12th top-five of the season. He still has a 19-point cushion on the cutoff line, so he will make the Round of 12. The first race of the upcoming three-race segment is the Mobil 1 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The 301-lap feature is scheduled for next Sunday, September 21. Fans can watch it on USA (2 pm ET onwards) or listen to its live radio coverage on PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

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Ryan Blaney on holding a grudge against Hendrick Motorsports rival following Gateway run-in

Last week at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson got in a nefarious encounter when the latter spun the Penske icon in Turns 3 and 4 on Lap 135. Needless to say, Blaney was furious. He even confronted the Hendrick Motorsports ace after the race.

It’s been a whole week since that incident, and Ryan Blaney is not upset anymore. He isn’t someone who would hold grudges or seek payback.

“I've always been someone who doesn't hold a ton of grudge," Blaney said during an interview at Bristol. "I've found it more healthy for me to get it out of my system right away, and then I can move on.”

“If I hold it in, then I think about it for a long time and then that's how things can kind of build and all that stuff. That's just kind of how I've approached it,” he added speaking of his tangle with the 2021 Cup Series champion.

Ryan Blaney won his career-first Cup Series championship back in 2023. His teammate Joey Logano won it in 2022 and again in 2024. This means that if another Penske guy wins the championship this year, it will mark a solid fourth championship sweep for the Mooresville-based organization.