“One of those crappy weekends”: Ryan Blaney comes clean on his Round of 8 opener

It was a bittersweet day for Team Penske at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. While two-time Cup Series champion, Joey Logano made this year's Championship 4 by winning the race, his teammate and reigning Cup Series champion, Ryan Blaney was relegated to the back of the field after getting involved in a Stage 2 crash.

Blaney cut his tire and therefore crashed during practice on Saturday. This had him resort to his backup car for the main event on Sunday. However, he felt great about his car before everything went southward due to the multi-car wreck on Lap 90, shortly after the restart.

"I felt great. Halfway there, I think I got to like 15th and I was ready to re-stack. We're gonna start stage 2 15th; halfway there...felt pretty good about it," Ryan Blaney recalled (via Frontstretch). "At least just trying to contend and I felt that we were going to better and clean the air too...felt great about our pace. It was just a matter of getting there and I just didn't even get to re-rack."

23XI Racing driver, Tyler Reddick, was running on the outside lane at the time with Chase Elliott and Martin Truex Jr. chasing him for position. The three then got into a wreck, which caught RFK Racing's Brad Keselowski and Blaney himself.

"Honestly, I couldn’t even see Brad. I couldn’t see him where he was in the grass, and Timmy (Tim Fedewa, spotter for Ryan Blaney) said coming up, and I saw him last second. It was too late for me to get left, and I thought I could squeeze on the outside; I just got clipped and bent both of our toe links. No good after that, so yeah, long weekend, just one of those crappy weekends," Ryan Blaney added.

Blaney finished 32nd, picking up five playoff points on the way. As of today, he sits 30 points below the cutline.

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Ryan Blaney reflected on "killing" headache during Las Vegas outing

Veteran journalist Kelley Crandall reported that Ryan Blaney was having a bad headache during Sunday's race, which made him ask for an Advil. According to Crandall's post regarding the same on X (formerly Twitter), Blaney said,

"My head was killing me. When we broke the right rear toe link, flopping all around in there me trying to get back to pit road, and you just get to freakin’ basketball back and forth, back and forth, on the headrest. I was fine until the end and then my head started to kill me again. It helped me a little bit but a long day."

A crash during practice, followed by a headache and then another crash; Las Vegas Motor Speedway gave Blaney a hard time. Nevertheless, the Team Penske driver will now prepare for next week's race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Fans can watch the race live on NBC Sports on October 27th from 2:30 PM ET onwards. Radio updates will be available on MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.