“The nut shots keep coming” - Ryan Blaney laments his luck after narrowly missing out on first win of the season at Gateway

For Ryan Blaney, results in the last few weeks of NASCAR Cup racing haven't been good. After four top-5 finishes in the first 12 races this season, his last three have all been outside the top 20: 36th place at Darlington, 39th at Charlotte and a 24th place finish at Gateway.

At Darlington it was a multi-car crash that affected the #12 team's result, at Charlotte a flat tire and simply running out of gas at Gateway. It's this aspect, of plain misfortune, that Blaney highlighted after Gateway, a race where he conceded victory from a very strong position, feeling "bummed" with his luck.

Blaney described the unfortunate defeat to Bob Pockrass:

“They (#2 team) were great, they did a great job. Yeah, happy for that team, I mean, obviously bummed for us. Just the nut shots keep coming here this past month. Hopefully, it straightens itself out. Just proud of the effort, have to figure out what happened there if we thought we had more fuel than we did. It’s not like we left it short on purpose, just thought we had more."

Blaney claimed that the team will have to dig into the matter and figure it out. He added that he was proud of all of Team Penske for their performance at Gateway.

Ryan Blaney's teammate Austin Cindric ended up taking the checkered flag while Joey Logano finished in 5th place.

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Ryan Blaney knew he had the win in the bag until he ran out of gas

After the race at Gateway, Blaney reflected on the circumstances that led him to go from having his first win this season within grasp to finishing 24th.

As per NASCAR, Blaney said:

"It quit running. Just a lap short. I thought we were plenty good. They must not have gotten it as full as they thought. I thought we were plenty good to go to the end and it wasn’t meant to be."

Blaney's crew chief Jonathan Hassler admitted that he knew they were "close" but it turned out to be a little closer than what they expected. He added that "like everyone else", they were trying to be aggressive and put themselves in a position to win.

But then the #12 Mustang ran out of gas and Ryan Blaney was left ruing his luck, waiting for another shot at a win this year. That will come next week at Sonoma Raceway, a racetrack on which Blaney has had only one top-5 finish in his last seven Cup starts.