The race at Richmond on Saturday is one that Ryan Blaney would like to forget. Even though he battled hard with Austin Dillon for the lead, unfortunately, a sudden fall-off due to tire issues caused Dillon and Alex Bowman to leave him behind, and he ended up in third place. While Blaney had his own set of reasons to blame, his crew chief, Jonathan Hassle, had another story to say about the Richmond problems they faced.
Dillon led 107 laps in that race, which also marked the first time the #3 car had led 100+ laps in a Cup race since the 1998 Daytona 500, led by Dale Earnhardt, who also led the race for the same lap number. Blaney’s disadvantage over Dillon was not having a fresh set of tires like him, and he ultimately couldn’t keep up when even Alex Bowman went past him with just 16 laps to go. In light of this, Hassler spoke about what went wrong for the #12 Team Penske outfit, as per him.
Hassler gives his take on Blaney’s Richmond mistakes
When asked if that’s the way the team wanted to play out the race, Jonathan Hassler told Matt Weaver, “I wanted to be on the short side of the pit and we got racing with the #3 and kind of got on the outside. Kind of took away that play for us a little bit. Once he peeled off and pitted, our only option was to do the even split and tried to have a little better tires.” Surely having a pit stall on the shorter side would have saved some valuable seconds for the #12, but Dillon got that advantage. Due to this, they had to spend their fresher tires to balance it out, an aspect that Dillon used to his advantage towards the end over Blaney.
[Twitter quote: Was there any second guessing by Jonathan Hassler? pic.twitter.com/lw4R7th68p — Matt Weaver (@MattWeaverRA)]
Weaver then asked him about the infamous fall-off and if there was anything Blaney could have done differently. “Yeah, I’m not sure. We lost all grip on that last run we made some small changes with it, trying to be better cause the #3 was better. Didn’t seem to go the direction that we expected it would.” The abrasive nature of the Richmond track eventually wore off Blaney’s tires, and Hassler acknowledges that Dillon could do a better job in the final execution due to the same.
But Hassler also expressed how this entire challenge about the fall-off of the option tire really brought them on their toes to plan their next moves. Speaking about experiencing that challenge, he said, “Yeah, it was very interesting for us crew chiefs and engineers trying to think through all the different strategy options. There was definitely few more plays in the book. Some scenarios that were definitely be possible to be tight on tire as far as budgeting and everything goes. Yeah I thought it was interesting and put on a pretty good race.”
All in all, Team Penske was happy trying their best, though the cards weren’t in their favor that day. Meanwhile, Blaney had his own opinion and reasons for missing the victory at Richmond.
Ryan Blaney pinned the blame on tire wear
Blaney’s initial thoughts after the race showed his disappointment. “I thought I had a chance. I was really, really good at the first run of the third stage at the end. Jumped him. The second run, I think he pitted a lap later than us and he got by me at the very end.” The gap of that one lap made the difference for Dillon.
“I really thought the only play what we did was run four five laps longer than him, its pretty far away, but I was like kind of cruise around, try to save tire, let tires kind of do their thing, and fell off the hardest I ever fell off all night and unfortunately lost second.”
This shows that Blaney has a clearer vision of the issue, which was based on the brutal track surface and tire wear he suffered. For a driver like Blaney, who has consistently shown front-running pace here, the challenge now is turning that speed into a complete race by smartly managing the tire conservation as well as the pit position, which also plays a crucial role.
