When Team Penske decided to take a chance on fuel, Ryan Blaney’s heartbroken June started when he ran out of gas on the last lap and lost the race at Gateway. His team chose to take a chance by taking only two tires two weeks later. This time, it paid off, as the reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion triumphed at Iowa Speedway in the series’ premiere.
Following Chris Buescher’s incident on Lap 261 that prompted the eighth and final caution, Blaney’s crew chief Jonathan Hassler decided to change just two tires while his chief competitor William Byron pitted for four. It was a bold move, particularly considering how quickly both Byron and Kyle Larson, his teammate at Hendrick Motorsports, had been going all day. Larson had won Stage 2, but a spin had eliminated him from the race.
“You know at some point those guys are going to be a little bit better than you are, so to go out there on two tires, really not have a lot of guys that are on two tires,” Hassler said. “All I wanted was for it to be really late in the run.”
There were 84 laps left when the race resumed. Blaney’s Ford proved swift enough to hold off Byron and Hendrick ally Chase Elliott’s pressure, and he went on to win the rest of the race for his first victory of the year.
When Jonathan mentioned two, I figured that would be a wise course of action. There weren’t many laps on our lefts. Lefts didn’t have a much on. I was aware that there was still a long way to go,” Blaney said. “You have no idea who else might take two. Some guys wishing to get track position and take two are running fifteenth on the back. Only a select number of us, I believe. I had no idea how they would react and behave. Until then, the entire night, we hadn’t been on two.
Later in the run, I made an effort to save as soon as I could as I knew that lap traffic would be where I would have difficulty in stage two. When I arrived at lap traffic,
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