While the draft is the great equalizer in NASCAR, Ryan Blaney was able to showcase that his No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse was superior in Sunday night’s/Monday morning’s NASCAR Cup Series Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway.
Blaney would turn in an historically dominant performance, leading 171 of the 263 laps in the event, and he was rewarded for his efforts with his second win of the season, which came in a thrilling overtime battle with Carson Hocevar, Bubba Wallace, and Christopher Bell.
Race Results: Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway
The 171 laps led by Blaney were the most laps led at a drafting track since Richard Petty’s 184 laps led in the 1964 Daytona 500.
Despite dominating the event, Blaney entered the overtime restart as the runner-up driver on the scoring pylon, as Hocevar had control of the race lead. Blaney credited Wallace and Bell for helping nudge him past Hocevar on the final lap of the race.
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“Bubba [Wallace] gave me really good shoves on the restart. We got hooked up really good. Then, yeah, gosh, Bubba and I got a huge run down the front straightaway. Bubba went three-wide bottom down the back, lined up for a really cool finish at the line,” Blaney said.
Blaney continued, “I really have to shout out Christopher Bell for being right on my bumper all the way through [Turns 3 and 4]. He was a big reason why we won the race. Appreciate that, Christopher.”
This win marks the second of the season for Blaney, who drew to within 65 points of Denny Hamlin for the regular-season championship lead with six races remaining until the Chase begins. Blaney is now a 19-time NASCAR Cup Series race winner.
The driver of the No. 12 Ford would cross the finish line ahead of Bubba Wallace by a margin of 0.063 seconds, however, Wallace was penalized for going below the yellow line on the final lap of the event.
While Wallace dipped below the out-of-bounds line in the third position, and re-entered the racing surface in the third position, NASCAR Race Control concluded that Wallace advanced his position, and the driver of the No. 23 Toyota was sent back to a 29th-place finish.
“A penalty is a penalty,” Wallace said as he exited the NASCAR hauler following an attempted appeal at the conclusion of the event.
With Wallace removed from the equation, Christopher Bell, who finished 0.068 seconds behind Blaney, was elevated to a runner-up finish. For Bell, who has suffered through a tumultuous season, which included a fractured left wrist suffered at Michigan International Speedway, this is his fifth runner-up finish of the year, and his second consecutive.
Carson Hocevar, who held the lead going into the final lap of the race, would be credited with a third-place finish, driving the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
Ty Gbbs would come home in the fourth position, just ahead of Erik Jones, who bolstered his Chase hopes with a fifth-place result.
Shane van Gisbergen, Austin Dillon, Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, and Chris Buescher rounded out the top-10 finishers in the Quaker State 400 at EchoPark Speedway.
The Quaker State 400 turned into a marathon event as a weather delay of more than 3 hours sent the finish of the race around the 1.54-mile speedway in Hampton, GA, to well past midnight.
Denny Hamlin, the series point leader, finished 12th on the night, which was enough for the driver to clinch his slot in the Chase for the Championship. Likewise, Tyler Reddick was able to clinch his berth into NASCAR’s championship fight with an eighth-place result at EchoPark Speedway.
Next up for the NASCAR Cup Series is the Window World 450 at North Wilkesboro Speedway on Sunday, July 19. That race will be televised on TNT Sports with coverage set to kick off at 7:00 PM ET. The Performance Racing Network (PRN) and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of that race.
