It’s not often that a fifth-place finish in a NASCAR Cup race stands out, but how Ryan Blaney finished fifth caught the attention of quite a few people in Sunday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
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While Kyle Larson dominated the Food City 500, leading 411 of the 500 laps, Blaney put up a valiant effort. The combination of staying out longer on old tires — which did not wear as quickly as most teams anticipated coming into the race — and waiting to pit until he absolutely had to, led to Blaney finishing fifth.
In many people’s eyes, that was perhaps the second-best storyline in the race after Larson’s dominating win.
Among those who applauded Blaney and crew chief Jonathan Hassler for their unique strategy was former Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Steve Letarte, now a broadcaster on NBC Sports.
Here’s how Letarte broke down the unique strategy that, if there had been a few more laps, we may have been talking about Blaney as the winner instead of Larson:
“For the people who say it cost him, he was running fourth when he ran long,” Letarte said of Blaney. “He rejoined the racetrack in ninth and drove it up to fifth.”
“Maybe you can say it (running longer than most other teams and holding off pitting) cost him fifth, one position, but we don’t know if he would have fallen back a position or not. It’s impossible to know what would have happened.
“I loved this gamble. Unlike a mile-and-a-half, unlike what we saw caught Byron out at Darlington, this isn’t about track position; it’s about laps. That is why I liked this strategy. That’s why I want to have this conversation.”
The decision to run long and put off pitting on the final pit cycle put Blaney in the lead on Lap 392 and he didn’t pit until he had to, on Lap 440 (a total of 48 laps), which is when Larson regained the lead and would never give it up for the remainder of the race..
“Everybody is going to say, ‘Wait a minute, you didn’t like this position when Byron did it (at Darlington), why do you like it when Blaney did it?” Letarte said.
“ Because at Darlington, it was position on a lap. Think of a clock, on the same clock. Once you lap a person, the risk and gain is inherently different. That’s what happened with Blaney. Having Larson down a lap makes this strategy work.
“He’s not losing time. A caution would have been absolutely great. It didn’t work out, but great work by the 12 team giving themselves a chance to beat the dominant car.”
Letarte Reached Back to His Old Days of Crew Chief Strategy
Blaney’s explanation was exactly how Letarte saw it.
“Running long right there was really our only play to win,” Blaney told Racer.com. “We were running fifth before the cycle started, so why not take a shot?”
“I thought I did a really good job of saving my tires to make sure I didn’t have a problem. We went really, really long. I had a lot of people lapped for a while and hung on pretty strong, and then we finally decided to pit and got back to fifth.
“I had third and fourth right in front of me, so it almost played out even better than what it did. It was a good weekend and a good call by Jonathan to have a shot to try to do something different, but it just didn’t work out.”
But Blaney felt he did the best he could, given the circumstances.
“I think it put on a pretty decent race,” he told Racer.com. “There were a lot of comers and goers, except for the lead, I guess, but it was a pretty fun day and a really good finish.”
“We kind of took a chance of running really long there, seeing if we’d get a caution, and then we finally bailed and had to make all the ground up and got back to fifth. Overall, it was a solid weekend,” he concluded.
