TALLADEGA, Ala. — Ryan Blaney looks back at the final lap of last April’s Talladega race and admits he made his move for the lead early.
It came in Turn 1. Bubba Wallace blocked him and the contact wrecked Wallace, ending the race and allowing Kyle Busch to win. Blaney finished second.
“I probably went a little early on the 23 into one,” Blaney said this week. “We still had pretty much a whole lap to go, but it’s hard not to take those runs if you have them and try to establish yourself in the lead in case there is a wreck and you want to be leading. It is hard to kind of discipline yourself sometimes when you want to go.”
Such is the challenge particularly at Daytona and Talladega. Six of the last seven Talladega races have been won by a last-lap pass. Drivers will face this issue in today’s race (2 p.m. ET on NBC).
For a driver running second, the question is how soon do they want to make a move for the lead?
If they do as Blaney did in the spring and make the move in the first turn, it can put them in a vulnerable spot off Turn 4 and cost them the win.
Then again, by taking the lead early, if there is a caution to end the race, then they win. For a playoff driver the decision on when to make the move can mean the difference between advancing or eventually being eliminated in this round.
“To some degree I’ve let go thinking about that because I’ve had races here where I’ve won and lost where you’re in position to make the move and the yellow comes out and you’ve just literally passed the start-finish line and you didn’t even get an opportunity to make the move,” said Brad Keselowski, a six-time winner at Talladega.
“You’re like, ‘I should have made the move,’ and then over time I’ve had races where I feel like we’ve gotten into a spot to where we’re the leader on the last lap and it falls apart, where you get your doors blown off and it’s like, ‘Oh, I was up front too early.’
“I think Talladega and Daytona, these tracks are really easy to overthink. It’s not that you don’t want to put the effort in or the workload and all that, but sometimes you have to just allow yourself to accept the fact that there are only certain pieces you can control that being one of them. What’s gonna happen on the last lap? Do you want to be leading? Do you want to be second?
“There are so many circumstances around that that you can’t control, whether it’s a yellow coming out as I was just saying or either the line behind you formulating the right way or the wrong way. To some degree you just want to get in position to strike and just be thankful for that and hopeful that you don’t do anything to screw it up and let circumstances dictate from there.
“Ultimately, the goal for me is I don’t ever think about, ‘Hey, I want to be in the lead or I want to be second on the last lap.’ I don’t really think about it that way. I think about it more so of I just want to be fortunate enough to be in the top two or three so that if things go my way, they’ll go my way.”
Three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin also doesn’t want to get wrapped up overthinking matters in the final lap.
“There’s so many different scenarios,” he said. “It would be tough to walk you through all of them of when you would decide to go. Just way too many scenarios. Not a lot of my wins have come from that type of late-race, last-lap type of thing. Still learning, just like the field is.”
