By: Adam Tropper
LONG POND, P.A - Ryan Blaney emerged victorious at Pocono on a Sunday that saw a tornado warning in the morning and moments just as wild on the track even after the skies cleared. The driver of the #12 Penske Racing Ford earned his 12th career win, his 2nd of the season, and his 2nd at Pocono. Blaney stated that "my 12th win in the 12 car came at the track where I got my first, so that's pretty cool... I'm proud of all the boys and girls at Team Penske."
Here's how the whole race unfolded:
Stage 1:
The race itself began fairly clean, with the exception being on lap 3 when Kyle Busch (who started in the rear due to an oil line failure) tapped the wall coming out of turn 3 and almost spun out. However, the race stayed green and the #54 Toyota of Ty Gibbs began to pull away from William Byron by as much as 3.5 seconds. Gibbs, who started on pole, is returning to the track where he made his Cup debut 2 years ago and secured his first ever top five finish last season.
Gibbs' lead vanished when the first caution of the day came out on lap 15. Noah Gragson, Gibbs' former Xfinity Series rival, suffered race ending damage after a self spin in turn 1. Gragson's teammate Josh Berry also suffered damaged from an unrelated incident. On the ensuing restart, Gibbs got loose into turn 1 and while he saved his car, he fell back the 6th place,. This allowed Martin Truex Jr., (who is in his final full-time season and was honored by Pocono Raceway) going into the weekend to take over the lead and go on to win the stage.
Pit strategy also came into play, and we saw multiple strategies being implemented. Many split the stage after the first caution, and others flipped the stage by pitting right before the stage end.
Stage 2:
Brad Keselowski cycled to the lead for the Stage 2 restart. He held onto the lead as Joey Logano had a bad restart and was passed by Erik Jones for 2nd. We experienced another period calm before the storm, as nothing notable happened until lap 52, when Trackhouse's Ross Chastain wrecked out of the race from 2 flat tires while running in eighth. After being released from the infield care center, Chastain said "I just spun out. As a driver in the Cup Series, I shouldn't be doing that."
The rest of Stage 2 went incident free. However, race strategy continued to be on full display, as everyone that split stage 1 processed to do the same. Around lap 75, green flag pit stops occurred among some other notables such as Ty Gibbs stopped for fuel and tires.
Stage 3:
The field got shuffled around once again after the stage break on lap 100. Chris Buescher inherited the lead with some other Ford Mustangs in Ryan Blaney and Brad Keselowski. Then restart was clean but exciting, as we saw cars going 4 & 5 wide in turn 1 and even getting into 3-wide situations through the tunnel turn. After about 15 more laps of intense but clean racing, the caution came out yet again, this time for Todd Gilliland. The Front Row Motorsports driver was dealing with brake issue all day, and in turn 1 the brake rotor finally gave out.
This once again shook up the strategy, as almost everyone came down pit road. However, not everyone took 4 tires, as coming off pit road we saw some variation near the front with 2 tire and fuel only stops. The most shocking thing however were the penalty's, a 3 of the top 5 drivers were penalized for speedway (Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, & Ty Gibbs).
From here on out, the wreckfest begun, as on the following restart, we saw cars go 3 by 3 down the front stretch. This resulted in Kyle Busch making an aggressive block on Corey LaJoie ,with LaJoie retailing and spinning Busch out in turn 1 in front o multiple cars. The day ended for 8 drivers from this wreck, Busch and LaJoie included. Busch had one of his famous media reactions, stating "you try to get in front of the run that's coming, and sometimes some don't lift - kamikaze."
On lap 127, they lined up again, and coming off of turn 1 they ended up going 4 wide, resulting in a crash between the #42 of John Hunter Nemechek and the #71 of Zane Smith. Smith, is having a rough rookie campaign with Spire Motorsports but is coming off of two consecutive top ten finishes and a top ten qualifying effort for this weekend.
The lap 133 restart was the 3rd attempt to get back into a rhythm of green flag racing, but that didn't happen. Ty Gibbs slowed significantly and then proceeded to leak a ton of fluid on the racing surface, forcing NASCAR to call a caution once again.
With only 25 laps to go in the race, Ryan Blaney is at the front of the field, followed by last weeks' winner in Alex Bowman & defending event winner Denny Hamlin. The next restart finally was a clean one, and this same top three continued to run at the front in that order. Bowman and Hamlin had a fight for 2nd at first, but Bowman was able to pull away, while Blaney took advantage of this and extended his lead by over 1.2 seconds to Bowman.
Even though Denny Hamlin made the pass for 2nd place with about 10 laps to go, he didn't have the time to catch up to Blaney, allowing him to secure his 2nd victory in the last month. In response to Hamlin saying that "you never lose a race, just always run out of time," Blaney's Crew Chief Jonathan Hassler said that "the 11 was really fast all day, I would say they were probably the class of the field... We lost of a little bit of track position. We were really playing the long game. That kind of put us in a position to short pit the third stage and get our track position."
Up for the Cup Series is the long anticipated return to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval for the Brickyard 400, the first running of the event since 2020 For more coverage from Pocono, follow Motorsports Today on Instagram, Twitter, and Spotify.
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