Denny Hamlin believed that Chase Elliott was going to beat Ryan Blaney during the Cup Series race at Iowa Speedway. On his Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin looked back at the final laps of the race and was impressed with how Elliot’s No. 9 car was running.
“Looking at the end of the race at the lap times, the nine was really coming quick with probably 70 or 80 to go,” Hamlin said. “I looked and his graph was below everyone, so he had a ton of speed. The nine had great speed all weekend and thought that when the five (Kyle Larson) had issues, he was going to be the next in line to be the favorite to win the race. I don’t know how the strategy came out.
“Blaney, obviously when you get them out front, it doesn’t matter how many tires you have, especially at a track where lap-time falloff was non-existent. You ran pretty much the same time all the way through the run. It’s going to be hard to pass, very hard to pass. So the only thing you know that two tires sometimes can do is make it to where your balance of your car shifts really wild to one side or another. Usually, it makes it quite a bit tighter. But clean air is king still with this NextGen car. Blaney took the two tires and seems like he kind of held those guys off pretty easily.”
Ryan Blaney reacts to holding off Chase Elliott at Iowa Speedway
Blaney won his first race of the season, and Eliott finished third (William Byron was second). After the race, Blaney spoke to reporters about winning on Sunday and clinching a spot in the playoffs.
“Oh, it’s always nice. It’s nice not to have that in the back of your head. If you get tore up in a handful of races, you’re not biting your nails off,” Blaney said. “It’s just nice to do it “Honestly, we’ve been close to two or three this year. Barely losing Atlanta. Having Gateway kind of sealed up, then that happened. Not kind of seeing where we could finish. Where we got wrecked at Texas and Darlington, we were really good. I would have liked to see where we could finish. Felt like we could never get the runs we deserved, crappy things would happen to us, we couldn’t finish it out.”
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