Ryan Blaney smiles in Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Monday, May 29, 2023, in Concord, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt Kelley) |
Jumping into the crowd to celebrate a big race victory appears to have become a Team Penske thing.
Ryan Blaney held off William Byron to win the rescheduled
Coca-Cola 600 on Monday at Charlotte Speedway, giving team owner Roger Penske a
sweep of the Memorial Day weekend’s top races in the United States.
Josef Newgarden won a record-extending 19th Indianapolis 500
on Sunday for Team Penske. Like Newgarden, Blaney jumped out of his car and
climbed into the crowd to celebrate the win with fans.
“I only did it because Josef did it,” Blaney said. “I was
pretty fired up. I don’t get that excited very often, but I was super pumped. I
loved how Josef did it Sunday. ... I said, ‘I am going to go in the stands like
Josef did and have some human contact.’”
Blaney compared it to jumping into a mosh pit at a metal
concert.
A few moments later, he tried to hold back tears with the
weight of 59-race winless streak lifted from his shoulders.
“You start to get to feel like you can’t win anymore,”
Blaney said. “We hadn’t won in awhile and that can get hard. I want to thank
the 12 (team) for believing in me.”
Blaney took the lead from Byron on a restart and led the
final 26 laps to win his first Cup Series race since the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at
Daytona in August of 2021.
Byron finished second, followed by Martin Truex Jr., Bubba
Wallace and Tyler Reddick.
Truex said Blaney’s emotions are understandable.
“He’s under a lot of pressure to perform,” Truex said.
“They’ve won a lot of races since his last race. I’m sure he questioned himself
through some point during that streak that he was on. He’s had many
opportunities to win and they’ve slipped away. Those are the hardest to think
about so he’s probably thinking, ‘we finally did it.’”
It is the first time Team Penske has swept the
Indianapolis-Charlotte doubleheader.
“The pressure was on us to try to sweep the weekend,” said
Blaney, who said he texted Newgarden after the Indy 500 win. “So that was the
goal. Fortunately we executed well enough to get it done.”
Blaney’s win came just days before Penske hosts a weekend of
racing on the downtown streets of Detroit. The return of racing in downtown
Detroit is Penske’s gift to the city he calls home. Then, the 86-year-old heads
to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the very few events he’s yet to win.
The 5 1/2-hour race included five wrecks in the final 50
laps, including one with 26 to go when last week’s All-Star race winner Kyle
Larson spun and took out defending Cup champion Joey Logano, Kyle Busch and
Christopher Bell.
Blaney had passed Byron on the previous restart, and then
got the jump on him again on the final restart and ran away with the checkered
flag.
It was a rain-soaked weekend at Charlotte, which washed out
practice and qualifying and postponed the race to Monday. That meant drivers
began the race without ever having turned a lap in the NextGen cars at the
1.5-mile oval for the first time in Coca-Cola 600 history.
More rain caused the race to be red-flagged for nearly an
hour after 158 laps, making the longest Cup race of the year even longer.
Defending race champion Denny Hamlin was left fuming after
his day ended with a wreck on lap 186, prompting him to call for NASCAR to
suspend its most popular driver Chase Elliott.
Hamlin claimed the Hendrick Motorsports driver intentionally
wrecked him by hooking his right rear bumper following a dust-up earlier in the
race.
“It’s a tantrum and he shouldn’t be racing next week,”
Hamlin said of Elliott. “Right rear hooks are absolutely unacceptable. I don’t
care.”
Elliott denied intentionally wrecking Hamlin in retaliation.
Hamlin wasn’t the only one fired up.
During the rain delay television cameras caught Aric
Almirola shoving Wallace after the two exchanged words. Wallace refused to say
what sparked the altercation, and said he wasn’t surprised at what unfolded.
“When you walk around with two faces, that’s what you get,”
Wallace said.
JOHNSON’S TEAM STRUGGLES
It was a rough night for Jimmie Johnson and his new Legacy
Motor Club team.
After saying he has never been more ill-prepared for a race
due to his inexperience in the NextGen car, Johnson spun out on lap 78 in a
single-car crash. He took his No. 84 Chevy behind the wall a few laps later and
was joined by there by Legacy teammates Erik Jones and Noah Gragson, who
suffered radiator damage.
After Johnson returned, he crashed into Gragson and spun out
a second time and went behind the wall again. He finished last.
“I think I learned a lesson with this aero package that I
didn’t know about,” Johnson said. “Much different than the car I have driven in
the past.”
HARVICK’S LAST RUN
Kevin Harvick finished 11th in his final Coca-Cola 600.
Harvick, who is retiring after the season, won the race in
2011 and 2013. He started Monday’s race on the front row, but quickly fell back
to the mid-20s and was never a major factor in the race.
UP NEXT
The Cup Series heads to Madison, Illinois, on Sunday, where
2022 Cup champion Joey Logano outdueled Kyle Busch in overtime to win the
inaugural race at World Wide Technology Raceway. -AP
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