At least in the moment, where Ryan Blaney can be at his most vicious, he insinuated there could be payback looming for William Byron over an incident between them on Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
Blaney restarted sixth on Lap 129, 39 laps into the second staged, when Byron forced a three-wide pass under Martin Truex Jr. and Blaney. Byron tagged Truex who got into Blaney, which sent the latter into the wall, and out of the race with a broken right rear tow link.
Blaney was only eliminated formally once time expired on the damaged vehicle policy clock. Blaney then drove his Penske No. 12 back onto the track, swerving towards Byron, and then taking his eliminated car to the garage.
After his release from the infield care center, required because he was eliminated due to crash damage, Blaney said the swerve was not intentional.
“I’m not going to hit him,” Blaney said. “I’ll save that for another time.
“I almost did on accident, actually. I got on the apron and the toe link was busted. I almost actually hit him when I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to show my displeasure, so we’ll see where it goes. I just wanted to show that I wasn’t happy. After watching the replay, I kind of deserve not to be happy. He used up some good track that I thought he didn’t have to use up.”
What exactly was his point of contention with Blaney?
“One, don’t shove it three-wide at a place you can’t run three-wide,” Blaney said. “If he wants to do that, fine, but your responsibility is to leave room. You have to leave room for the top two cars.
“You shoved the bottom of three (wide), you have to leave space and he was off the dotted line until we were already wrecking. He faded up and sandwiched the 19 into me.
“We’re as high as we can go, so it’s like, I don’t know if he thought he had enough room or gave us enough room and didn’t or whatever. That’s just what I was like, you’re responsible for those two guys when you shove guys three-wide. You have to act like two cars are to the top of you.”
After the race, Byron conceded a degree of fault in expressing that he thought he had the pass completed.
“I felt like I was ahead of them,” Byron said. “The exit is really narrow right there. I hate if I did come up a little bit. I was surprised I was even in that spot. I felt like I would never get to the bottom of a three-wide there, but the lane was there into (Turn) 1 and my car turned really good. I got almost clear of Martin and then yeah, I hate that it happened.
“I don’t want to crash, especially that early in the race, so I didn’t really expect that to happen. I probably could have given a little more room, it just gets really, really tight right there.”
Blaney was especially aggravated no doubt because he had taken a car that started 17th and was slowly moving into contention. A savvy decision to long pit during green flag stops allowed him to charge to P8 by the end of the stage and he was challenging for a top-5 by the decisive moment of his race.
Byron went onto finish sixth.