Ryan Blaney and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Racing team powered to a fifth-place finish tonight in the Go Bowling 400 at Kansas Speedway, their best result of the 2016 season.
“It seems to be a good track for us,” Blaney said after climbing out of his classic Wood Brothers Racing Ford Fusion. “It was a strong night for us. We had a good car all night.”
The NASCAR Sunoco Rookie of the Year contender followed up a seventh-place qualifying effort Friday with a race run where he was only out of the top 10 for a few laps after a green-flag pit stop at about the half-way point of the race and ran as high as third.
“I thought we were better at the beginning of the race than the end,” Blaney said. “We lost it a little bit when the track got cooler. But the team did a great job working on it and getting it better by the end of the race. We weren’t chasing anything big, just small stuff and they did a good job working on it. It’s something to build on.”
With about 30 laps to go, and before Ford teammate Joey Logano got caught up in a multi-car crash, Blaney and Logano swapped ninth and 10th positions for several circuits.
“Yeah that was interesting,” Blaney said. “He’d be better than us in the beginning, I’d pass him and he’d pass us back. That was a lot of fun. When you can run with the best guys, you learn a lot. and that was a great learning experience. It’s a shame he got in a wreck.”
Blaney, now 16th in the driver points standings, as the Wood Brothers head to Dover International Speedway for the AAA 400 Drive for Autism next weekend.
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