Ryan Blaney has been hit hard by three crashes at Daytona and Nashville in the past eight months, two crashes at the 4.5-mile Daytona Speedway that affected his body, but a 1.33 Miles had one crash at the Nashville track. mental burden.
“I think the hit in Nashville was the hardest hit I’ve ever had,” Blaney says. “Mentally, I was more messed up after Nashville than I was after those two hits at this racetrack (Daytona).”
On that June day in Nashville in 2023, Brainy’s Ford crashed head-on into the inside wall on a restart. He was not wearing a mouthpiece, which measures the gravitational acceleration experienced by a driver’s body at the time of the crash, but he has since worn one.
“The mouthpiece data is very useful to us because we have the black box data of the car. But it only shows the gravity loads and impacts of the car,” he said of the device, which resembles a football mouthguard. Blaney says.
In a 12-car crash at Daytona, just two months after Nashville, the NASCAR Cup champion’s body crashed when Ty Gibbs hooked Blaney’s right rear and slammed his Ford car head-on into the outside wall. received a 70g impact. The powerful blow was enough to make the SAFER barrier flex. This year, Blaney’s body was hit with 55 grams during two Daytona 500 qualifying races on Thursday night. In the 11-vehicle crash, William Byron’s Ford Mustang Dark Horse became stuck in the right rear end and crashed head-on into the outside wall of Triobal.
“It hurts more today than it did yesterday,” Blaney said Saturday. “I always feel like I’m more sore on the second day… around my neck, all over my back, just tense muscles. Other than that, everything else felt fine. Muscles from the shoulders down. And so on, it just pulls in some strange parts that you’re not used to. Those things will pass.”
During Thursday’s race at Daytona, Kyle Busch (8 years old) dealt a hard blow to Ryan Blaney (12 years old).
Blaney said he felt pain in more parts of his body for a longer period of time after his accident at Daytona in August 2023.
“In August, I was able to go home and have people at home work for me,” Blaney said. “I haven’t been able to work as much as I did last year because Duel was over and everyone went home. We have an excellent physical therapist at our camp. If I’m still feeling pain, She’ll help me out a little bit tomorrow (Sunday). It wasn’t as bad as last year, but it was still pretty brutal.”
Blaney was pleased with the way his Mustang fell apart after it crashed into the wall Thursday night.
“I think everything NASCAR has done to shatter these things further is a good thing because we haven’t seen the right front of the firewall before,” Blaney says. “There are some things we have talked about with them to improve.”
Blaney’s team tweaked several aspects of his car after Nashville, particularly regarding the straps and HANS device.
“I wear fairly short HANS straps because I don’t want my head to move forward too much,” Blaney says. “All you can do is make sure everything is in top condition.”
Blaney admits he’s been taking more hits than he’d like these days, but he also understands that’s part of the sport.
“I never think about the negative side of this,” Blaney says. “When I signed up for this, I watched my dad’s race and I understood that there was a risk involved. Things were going to happen. I don’t think it took a huge toll on me personally. The next morning I was sitting and it hurt. It’s hard to move around, but you get through it and you take your Advil and solve the problem. That’s all you can do.”
