Blaney has bad break on road course

The Hartford native was running in the top 10 until an accident did him in.
SONOMA, Calif. -- For the second straight year, Dave Blaney and the Jasper Engines & amp; Transmissions Ford team left Infineon Raceway wondering what might have been.
They played the innocent victim to overzealous racing on the tight 1.99-mile road course and lost a bid for another top-10 finish.
After starting 15th, Blaney moved forward steadily toward the top 10 and stood ninth after narrowly avoiding a multi-car spin on lap 63 when Jeff Burton turned Rusty Wallace around, collecting Dale Earnhardt, Jr. just in front of Blaney to bring out the fourth caution flag of the day.
On the restart two laps later, Kurt Busch made an ill-fated three-wide move inside Roush Racing teammate Burton and Scott Pruett, causing the trio to spin in unison through the middle of the corner.
Caught inbetween
Blaney, following just behind the group, braked, but was caught between the stationary cars and the approaching car of Joe Nemechek, flattening the left-front tire and rear end of the No. 77 Jasper Ford.
By the time Blaney had run through the back-end of the course with the flat tire flapping, his left-front fender was also heavily damaged.
After pitting for repairs, Blaney returned one lap down to the leaders and effectively out of contention, finishing 32nd.
"We had a good, solid run going and the car was pretty balanced, but there was just nowhere to go when that group spun in front of us," said Blaney. "We didn't hit real hard, but it was enough to put the front-end off just a little bit, and we had to run a half-lap with the tire flat, so that was it for us."
Teammates fared better
The rest of the Penske-Jasper-powered trio fared much better, with Ryan Newman finishing just behind the front group of Chevys and fourth-place Bill Elliott for his fifth top-five finish of the season.
With his 32nd-place finish, Blaney is now 23rd in the standings entering the final off-weekend of the 2003 season.
Teams return to action in two weeks at Daytona for the Pepsi 400 and begin a stretch of 20 consecutive weekends to conclude the 2003 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season.