Ryan Blaney is a pretty even-keel kind of guy. He rarely gets overly excited or upset. And on the flip side, he’s a rather mellow dude. Nothing seems to bother him. But mention the 2020 Daytona 500, and Blaney can’t help but sigh. Of all the 364 starts he’s had as a Cup driver, that one bothers him the most as he just barely missed out on winning the Great American Race.
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Denny Hamlin won the 2020 race, barely beating Blaney to the finish line in what was the second-closest finish in Daytona 500 history.
“The 2020 Daytona 500, I’d say, is tough,” Blaney said on a recent edition of the Chasing Checkers podcast. “That’s the one (Ryan) Newman and I got together. We were running, coming down to the end of this race, the Daytona 500, our biggest race of the year, and I’m second coming towards the lead coming off turn four.”
The race went nine laps into overtime before Hamlin took the checkered flag in conjunction with a yellow caution because of a last-lap tangle between Blaney and Newman coming to the finish line on the frontstretch.
“I kind of don’t make the best move probably, not the right one, and end up not winning the race,” Blaney said. “That one haunts me to this day.”
Not making “the best move probably” is an understatement, as Blaney tried to draft Newman in front of him, their bumpers locked, Newman went into the outside wall and then slid upside down in one of the scariest crashes Daytona has seen in a long time.
“It’s so easy to like Monday (morning) quarterback the thing,” the Team Penske driver said. “It’s like, ‘Well, gosh, just do this right,’ and I try not to be that way because it’ll drive you insane.”
Newman wound up being hospitalized overnight but left the next day, sore but uninjured otherwise.
Maybe The Third Time Will Eventually Be the Charm
For the record, it was the second time Blaney finished second in the 500, having come up short to winner Kurt Busch in the 2017 edition of NASCAR’s biggest race of each season. He does have one victory at DIS in the 2021 summer race there.
What should Blaney have done differently?
“Make a different move at the end of the race, like choose a different option, like a different lane,” he said. “It’s a split-second decision, that’s why I try not to like go crazy thinking about that stuff.”
While Blaney has replayed that incident numerous times in his mind, he also refuses to let it get the best of him.
“I try to learn from it right away, like spend half an hour on it, figure out ‘okay if you’re in this spot again’, think about this, do this, and then just move on from it. Because if I go to sleep thinking about it, I’m never going to stop thinking about it.
“So I have to be over it that night, and then I can wake up the next day like it’s a new week and let’s just move on from it.”
But even though he’s moved on from that fateful day, there’s no doubt in Blaney’s mind what would have happened if he had made a more precise move on Newman.
“If I would have just done this different, we would have won that race,” he lamented. “All you can do is learn from it for the next time, and hopefully you make the right choice.”
