Blaney is angry about the way the restarts went in Indianapolis

Ryan Blaney was frustrated after finishing third in Sunday’s Brickyard 400, but didn’t know who to take his emotions out on.

It took two overtimes to determine the winner, and Blaney felt he was in position to be that driver. On the first attempt at overtime, Blaney took the outside lane next to leader Brad Keselowski, who was going to run out of fuel at some point, and Blaney wanted to be ready when that happened.

Keselowski ran out of fuel coming out of Turn 4, but that was before the race restarted and he was able to pit. Kyle Larson, running third, moved to the front row for the restart and, although Blaney was the control car, had the advantageous lane into Turn 1 and took the lead. Larson held his position into the second overtime and won the race.

“I am,” Blaney said. “I told my guys I’m mad, but I don’t know who to be mad at, there’s nobody to be mad at. It’s just racing luck. The break he got and the hardships we went through at the time ruined our race.

“We put ourselves in the perfect position to win, and a freak circumstance went in his favor and killed our race and any chance of winning. I’m mad about that. I’m not mad at anyone. It’s just Lady Luck that I’m dealing with. It sucks.”

The first overtime attempt resulted in a multi-car crash in Turn 1. Larson had already passed Blaney when the caution came out, prompting an ensuing red flag. During the delay, Blaney was irate on his No. 12 team radio about what he felt was NASCAR giving Larson the race by moving him to the front row.

It was an extended back-and-forth as Blaney continued to vent his frustration. The reigning series champion felt that NASCAR should have called the restart and let the field choose which lane they wanted, because if the control car had pitted Keselowski, Blaney would have chosen the inside lane. Instead, Blaney felt that Larson, from third, had the advantage.

“Of course, I can easily say that if the leader runs away at the restart zone, you have a long time to wave away the green re-elector, because you are now promoting the third man to where I am getting screwed,” he said. “I am the one getting screwed. The third man is benefiting. The man behind me is benefiting. It’s one of those strange… you don’t see that very often in a place like this.

“If it was somewhere else, it wouldn’t be so bad because you can keep the second lane. Here it’s a death sentence. You don’t keep the lead from the top of the front row, so of course I’m going to say that in that situation they have to reshuffle it to make it fair. That’s the only way it can be fair. … I think they can do it a little bit differently.”

On the restart of the second overtime, Larson again beat Blaney in Turn 1. The No. 12, which wobbled slightly exiting the corner, fell into the clutches of Reddick, who took second place.

“We should have won the race,” Blaney said. “He was going to go out when we turned green there, so we were going to take the lead, and I’m going to pull away from . I picked the top on the restart because I couldn’t believe he was going to stay out; he pitted six laps ahead of us, and I knew we were tight. There was no way he was going to make it.

“He stays out there and I went for the top because I thought, ‘He’s going to run out on the restart and I’m going to take the lead,’ and he runs out before pit road, goes in and Larson gets promoted to the bottom and the race is over now…

“That just stinks. That’s just dumb luck. We did everything right to win, but he had a good chance.”