William Byron on Ryan Blaney incident: ‘I hate that this happened’

In the middle of Phase 2, Ryan Blaney ended up in the wall on a restart, at least from Blaney’s perspective thanks to William Byron. Byron wasn’t trying to cause an incident, but sometimes you can’t avoid it in NASCAR.

Caution breeds caution, as the saying goes. John Hunter Nemechek retired with 62 laps to go on the second stage. That set up a restart that saw Ryan Blaney move into an excellent position. Then William Byron missed three times.

Byron was on bottom, Martin Truex Jr. was in the middle and Blaney was on top. Blaney felt like he was being trapped down by the 24, which put the 19 on the track.

Since William Byron could soon be Ryan Blaney’s brother-in-law, this is a juicy incident all around.

“I felt like I was ahead of them and it’s really tight at the exit,” Byron explained after the race. via Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports. “I hate it when I get up a bit, but I was surprised that I was in this position. You know, I felt like I was never going to get to the end of the three-wide boundary there.

“The track was kind of there, and my car was turning really well, and I almost passed Martin, and then, uh, I hate that that happened. I don’t want to crash, especially not so early in the race. I didn’t expect that to happen, but I probably could have left a little more leeway, and I don’t know, it’s going to be really, really tight.”

William Byron finished sixth in the race. Ryan Blaney was a DNF for P36.

Ryan Blaney is upset with William Byron

Although the two have a close relationship, Blaney wasn’t thrilled with what Byron did on the track. It was early in the race, relatively early, and Byron missed the three-pointer on a restart. Blaney has every right to be upset about this situation.

Given the close relationship between the two, I’m not sure anything different will come of it. Blaney might have a little retaliation up his sleeve.

“I was just mad that I ended up in the fence and broke it,” Blaney said. “He (Byron) pushed it way under us three times and got close to (Turn) 2, got overtaken and ended up breaking down. We kind of have every right to be angry. And he gets away scot-free. Just a shame. I thought we did pretty well, eventually getting to sixth place and making up really good ground on the first stage. … We had something to work with and I was looking forward to the start of the second half of the race, but just didn’t get that chance.”

A tough finish for Blaney. After such a hot start to the season, he is losing ground. William Byron gets back into the top 10 and can now build momentum for the All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600 over the next two weeks.