Ryan Blaney details his walk-off victory at Martinsville Speedway and how the No. 12 Team Penske team stacks up as the 2024 Cup Series Championship looms at Phoenix Raceway.
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00:00A familiar sight again, Ryan Blaney, victory lane, martinsville for a walk-off win in the
00:05championship for a hard-fought day for you guys that ended in victory lane.
00:10Can you describe it for me?
00:11A long day.
00:14I thought we did a great job all day of kind of getting to where we need to be and getting
00:18our car better all night and got it the best at the end of the race.
00:22And I thought I was pretty good there, you know, midway through, started third stage
00:25and just could never, like, get the lead.
00:26It was too free to do what I wanted and, you know, I think the track was cooling off
00:31and getting looser and so we did a great job of adjusting for the last run of the race
00:35and didn't have the restart kind of go our way and fell back to, you know, ninth or tenth.
00:41But our car held on really good on the long run.
00:44Jonathan did a great job of figuring out what we needed to do to hang strong and I kind
00:48of, like, put it in my head, like, even though there's 80 laps to go or so, I'm really going
00:52to save my rears.
00:53Even though I'm far back, I just the runs before that, I kind of got greedy and burned
00:57my rears off to where I got when I got to the leader or second.
01:01I just couldn't pass him.
01:02I couldn't really fade up the racetrack and go off the corner.
01:04So I tried to keep that in the back of my head the whole run and it allowed me to do
01:07that.
01:08So I had to lay the bumper to some guys more than I would have liked to.
01:12But it was nice to race chase clean and be able to get the win.
01:17So proud of the efforts and looking forward to have another shot next week.
01:20You mentioned that other shot.
01:21You know the three drivers you'll be racing against, one of them is your team penske teammate
01:25of Joey Logano.
01:26But what can you say specifically about this number 12 crew that is championship form for
01:30next Sunday?
01:31I think our resilience and perseverance is amazing on this group.
01:34I mean, I don't think it's a secret it's been an up-down year for us and really none of
01:38our doing, like, not a lot of our doing.
01:40I feel like we've had great speed and we've worked amazing together.
01:43It's just got caught up in a lot of wrecks and things not going our way and it's really
01:47kind of, I think, overshadowed how good this team really is and how fast our stuff's been.
01:52And in the playoffs, too, I feel like we have one good week and then we get caught up in
01:56a wreck and then one good week and get caught up in a wreck.
01:58And I thought our speed's been super fast the whole playoffs and really all year.
02:02So just nice to step up at the time.
02:03I mean, coming to this race last year, you know, it wasn't a must win for us and we went
02:08out and performed like we needed to and then, you know, tonight needing to win and everyone
02:14stepping up when they needed to, that just speaks volumes for this team.
02:17So I'm really excited to try to get Mr. Penske another championship.
02:20It's nice that, you know, we're going to join the 22 group in there.
02:23Give him a good shot.
02:24Everybody back at Team Penske deserve it and hopefully we can deliver.
02:28Well, championship four spot means you get out to Phoenix early.
02:30So we'll see you there early.
02:31Thanks.