Rough Night At Texas Leaves Blaney 29th In Duck Commander 500

April 10, 2016

Ryan Blaney and the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane team had a fast Ford Fusion for Saturday’s Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway as evidenced by his seventh-place starting spot. But a series of events and a lack of proper balance on the chassis set-up relegated the team to a 29th-place finish, four laps behind the leaders.

Team co-owner Eddie Wood said the team struggled with a tight handling condition all night, and the problems were compounded by two unscheduled pit stops, both for vibrations.

One was a suspected loose wheel, the other was indeed a loose wheel.

Then after the race, the team discovered damage to the nose of the No. 21 Ford Fusion, which could explain some of the tight condition.

“It’s so dark on pit road during a night race that it’s hard to see something like that,” team co-owner Eddie Wood said. “We were adjusting for a tight condition, but our adjustments could have been off because we didn’t know about the damage to the lower nose. There’s no doubt the damage didn’t help matters, but it’s unlikely it was the main culprit leading to the off night that we had. I would say it more or less just exacerbated an already existing tight condition.”

Wood said the team isn’t sure when the damage occurred.

Crew chief Jeremy Bullins said that even with the issues with the damage to the nose, the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Fusion wasn’t as fast as it needed to be to run with the leaders.

“It was a rough night,” he said. “We missed the balance and were too tight.”

The disappointing finish dropped Blaney from 15th to 20th in the Sprint Cup points standings, but he’s headed to one of his better tracks, Bristol Motor Speedway for next Sunday’s Food City 500.

At Bristol, Blaney has an Xfinity Series win in 2014 and a Camping World Truck Series victory last year.