By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service
FORT WORTH – Ryan Blaney won his first career NASCAR Cup Series All-Star Race Sunday night at Texas Motor Speedway earning a $1 million payday in the annual fan favorite non-points event. And he and his team celebrated twice.
Blaney’s No. 12 Team Penske Ford ultimately beat Denny Hamlin in the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Toyota by .266-seconds in an overtime finish. But at one point, Blaney thought he may have taken the checkered flag twice – a caution flag flew the first time he was approaching the finish line in regulation – only seconds before he crossed the line.
He and his team thought he had won the race, not realizing the yellow light was on for an incident involving Ricky Stenhouse Jr. on the backstretch. Moments after cruising across the finish line, Blaney unstrapped the driver side window netting preparing to celebrate the big win with his team, which was high fiving one another and jumping onto pit road to applaud their apparent win.
NASCAR, however, ruled with video evidence that the caution light had activated for the Stenhouse incident on-track – yards before Blaney actually crossed the finish line.
As the cars made laps on the 1.5-mile track preparing for the overtime restart, Blaney could be seen trying to re-fasten the driver-side safety-net with one hand, steering the car under caution with the other. After finally getting the net secured, the race restarted and Blaney pulled away from the field going down the backstretch to take the checkered flag – the 26th different driver to win NASCAR’s prestigious All-Star event.
“It was about to be real bad for us, I thought the race was over,” Blaney said after the race. “Everyone thought the race was over. I already had my window net down.
“I do want to thank NASCAR for letting me kind of fix it and not make us come down pit road. But yeah, that was really tough. Then having to do it all over again after trying to get that window net…
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