It was a close fight at Nashville Superspeedway as Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, and William Byron locked horns for the top spot. When Hamlin won Stage 1, the scales seemed to tip in JGR’s favor, but Blaney flipped the script, fighting his way up from a 15th-place start. He stretched his stint to gain track position and capitalized with a shorter pit stop at the stage break. From that point on, Blaney was a constant figure at the front.
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With 18 lead changes among nine drivers, the race went through several ups and downs, but Blaney answered back in Stage 2. The final stage saw Blaney’s No. 12 car under relentless attack from Hamlin and Byron, who traded blows for the lead. However, it was Carson Hocevar who surged past Hamlin to snatch P2, trailing Blaney by 2.830 seconds, relegating Hamlin to P3 and Byron to P5.
Recalling his duel with Hamlin and Byron, Blaney admitted, “I was on edge. There was a couple times where Denny and I were on edge.” He recounted moments where Hamlin’s car slid precariously ahead of him, both drivers teetering at the limit. At one point, Blaney dove three-wide at the bottom of the frontstretch, knowing he couldn’t afford to ride behind them. It was, as he put it, “a risky move.”
Dropping onto the apron and cutting a line lower than any driver would desire, Blaney conceded, “I didn’t enjoy being down there but I had to go down there. You’ve got to take everything that you can get, and then you have to be cautious of, like, hey, this is not my normal entry into the corner.
“I have to kind of calculate and adjust how I can get in here so I don’t wipe these guys out. You have to take chances and risks, but you can’t afford mistakes. That’s the double-edged sword of it. You’re 110 percent every lap.”
Blaney’s boldness and discipline ultimately secured him the win, threading the needle between risk and reward.
Did Denny Hamlin see Ryan Blaney’s win coming during the practice?
During the post-race interview, Hamlin remarked that Blaney’s skills on the long run made all the difference. He noted that the #12 Ford Mustang’s strength had been apparent since the practice runs, stating, “I thought that the No. 12 showed in the really long run in practice, it was a lot better [than some other cars].”
That, Hamlin explained, is why his team did not push for long runs until the race itself, where it became clear that Blaney’s car held its pace slightly better than his own No. 11 Toyota. But during the race, Hamlin admitted that his car “really went off a cliff” and became loose. He observed that while many cars around them were wrestling with handling issues, Blaney’s Mustang seemed to stick like glue.
Nonetheless, Hamlin partially attributed the challenge to the track itself, observing that the surface went through a strange phase in the final 30 laps. “Everyone had it pinned to the bottom,” he said. With too few cars running in the middle, the track threw dust into the middle and upper lanes, making them unusable and, in turn, hurting overtaking opportunities.
