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NASCAR’sBlaney OK with not winning Daytona on technicality
NASCAR’s Dave Blaney is OK with not winning last week’s Daytona 500 on a technicality
If you’re wondering if Dave Blaney wanted the Daytona 500 to end without an on-track completion, the answer is “No, but yes.”
“It didn’t matter,” Blaney said as he prepared to qualify for today’s NASCAR Sprint Car race in Phoenix. “If you lucked out like that and won the race, OK. It’s not a great way to win, but every single driver there would have taken the win that way.
“It’s the Daytona 500 and it’s a lot of money and everybody would have taken it and they pretty much told me that when we were standing on the back straightaway,” he said.
The unusual conversation took place after Juan Pablo Montoya’s crash into a safety truck that ignited a fire.
“For a while there it looked questionable as to whether they could fix the track, and we didn’t really know what was going on and how bad the track was,” Blaney said. “So, yeah, everything was going through my mind because we didn’t know what they were going to do.”
Blaney, who eventually finished 15th to earn $296,513, spoke of circumstances when he led under a caution flag prior to the fire.
“It was [going to be] everybody’s last pit stop to make it the rest of the way on fuel and tires, but we stayed out there to take advantage of leading a lap under caution. All of a sudden that thing [fire] happens and we’re sitting there in the lead. We never knew what would happen then.”
His spot as the leader wouldn’t have lasted if the fire hadn’t erupted because he needed repairs to a fender.
“I came into pit road too fast on a green-flag pitstop and slid the right-front tire too much and blew it out,” Blaney said. “When it blew out, it popped the right-front fender off. We’d been working all night to patch it up. [The pitstop] with 40 laps to go was the last chance to work on it, even though we knew we’d be re-starting from the tail end of the line.”
Faced with that prospect, it was good fortune that Blaney extended his on-track position.
“We knew it would be a really slow pitstop and then we’d re-start at the back anyway, so it was a good chance to just stay out there another lap as the leader and get the bonus points and then pit,” Blaney said. “Then, before we pitted, that thing happened with Montoya so we were sitting at the front of it.”
Minus the what-might-have-been outcome, the 15th-place finish of Blaney’s 398th NASCAR start, to say the least, did wonders for sponsor Ollie’s Bargain Outlet, team owner Tommy Baldwin and, of course, Blaney.
At the end of January, it looked like Blaney’s season wasn’t materializing very well.
“Yeah, things are still up in the air, somewhat, but we did get a sponsor for that race [Daytona 500] and, because they got so much exposure on the car, they’re staying on the car and sponsoring it this week, too,” he said of Ollie’s.
Now, he said, it looks like close to 20 races will be sponsored.
“It can easily go to where we get enough to do the whole season — kind of like last year when you start filling in [as the season unfolds].
“It certainly helps getting all that exposure by being in the right place at the right time for our team and our sponsor and myself. It never hurts.”