Blaney on Pole at Daytona, Regular Season Champion Byron Hit with Inspection Violation
By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Mother Nature and Daytona did not agree with each other on Friday afternoon, with NASCAR Cup Series qualifying cancelled and the field set by the rule book, landing Ryan Blaney on the top of the board for Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400.
Fifth in the standings coming into the weekend, Blaney is among the drivers fighting for second place in the regular season points race and the crucial bonus points that come with in.
Blaney sits 15 points behind Chase Elliott in second, with Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson between them.
“It’s possible, for sure. I think that’s one of the biggest things we’ve looked at this week is we can get to second, and that’s big and a few more bonus points for the Playoffs,” said Blaney.
“After the season we’ve had so far with a bunch of DNFs, it’s pretty amazing that we’re fifth. It just shows how well we’ve run, and to have a shot at second is really, really strong, so it definitely can happen. I’ll be paying attention to the guys I’m racing around in points all night through the stages and then when you get to the final stage, you’ll go try to position yourself up for the win, but you try to snag as many stage points as you can.
So, it’s definitely possible, that’s for sure. You never know what can happen.”
Alex Bowman will start alongside him on the outside of the front row.
Bowman currently holds the 16th and final transfer spot into the Playoffs and comes into the weekend in danger of being bumped out should a new winner come away from the World Center of Racing victorious.
Bowman’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson starts third, followed by Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Denny Hamlin, Austin Dillon, Chase Briscoe, Brad Keselowski, and Josh Berry.
Regular season champion William Byron originally qualified in eighth-place, but his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet was found have had unapproved adjustments to the splitter after passing inspection.
The splitter struts were reinstalled and re-run over the underbody scanning station and failed due to the adjustment.
As a result, crew chief Rudy Fugle was ejected from the race, along with the loss of pit selection for the No. 24 team, having to start at the rear of the field, as well as a mandatory stop and go penalty after the green flag.
In Fugle’s place, team engineer Brandon McSwain will take over the crew chief role for the remainder of the race weekend.
Having already locked up the regular season championship, Byron came into the weekend looking to sweep the year at Daytona after winning his second straight Daytona 500 in February – something that has obviously gotten a lot harder after the penalty.
The Superspeedway Peloton
Superspeedway racing has evolved over the years with the current Next Gen era of racing on these types of tracks being heavily dependent on fuel mileage – especially at Daytona and Talladega.
Byron likened the current generation of superspeedway racing to what you would see in cycling, where the field is packed up in a peloton with some cyclers that will break away from the field, only to eventually caught by the pack as the race evolves.
“This is pretty much a two-by-two race. You’re pretty much pushing whoever’s in front of you, and that’s how you go forward,” said Byron.
“So how do you separate — okay, I want to go forward versus, you know, I want to help my teammates. So you got to kind of find that guy on the track. Hopefully we have a good pit cycle.
“It’s kind of a peloton race here. You know, you get the guys out front that want to burn a bunch of fuel, try to save fuel, and then you cycle forward. So how do we make that peloton work the best at the end? That’s going to be the key.”
Blaney’s Blocking School
In talking about the chaotic nature of the regular season finale, Blaney explained how runs form with the Next Gen cars on superspeedways and how the leaders can and can’t, or shouldn’t, try to defend their position in the final stages of the race.
“You have to judge how big the run is behind you and sometimes you just can’t pull up in front of it. It someone is running 10 miles an hour faster than you, then why are you pulling up in front of somebody? You’re just gonna cause mayhem and if they don’t run through you, and if they lift and check up in time, they’re gonna get run over from behind, too.
“That, to me, would signify as a bad block, just being situationally aware of where you’re at on the racetrack and the closing rate of some of these things. That’s a tough one, but I think the closing rate stuff is really big. You see that a lot. Guys are coming 10 miles an hour faster and a guy like last-second pulls up and causes mayhem.
“That, to me, is just not the smartest of moves.”
