Bad Luck Continues for Ryan Blaney as Blown Engine Ends Dominant Day
Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 Team Penske team were without a doubt the class of the field in Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but the 31-year-old came up empty on the day after a blown engine ended his day on Lap 208 of the 267-lap event.
Ryan Blaney's engine just exploded. That's the second engine failure of the year for the No. 12 team. #NASCARonFS1 pic.twitter.com/UyRwsOXkw7
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 23, 2025
RACE RECAP: Kyle Larson Outduels Teammate Alex Bowman in Closing Laps at Homestead
RESULTS: Straight Talk Wireless 400 at Homestead
Blaney, who was running third at the time that the powerplant in his race car expired, had led a race-high 124 laps on what was an absolutely dominating day for the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion. After exiting the race, Blaney explained that he had no indication that his day was about to come to a premature end.
“I didn’t have any warning," Blaney stated in a post-race interview. "It just laid over when I got back to wide-open down the front and that was all she wrote. It just stinks. We had a really fast Dent Wizard Ford Mustang. We led a lot of laps."
Prior to the engine failure, Blaney had dropped to the eighth position after a collision on pit road with Chase Elliott on Lap 169.
Contact on pit road between Ryan Blaney and Chase Elliott! 👀 #NASCARonFS1 pic.twitter.com/VCqjMYU6ud
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 23, 2025
After pushing past the frustration on pit road, Blaney had worked his way back into contention when the engine failure occurred. Blaney was bummed out that he didn't get a chance to see the battle for the win through to the end of the race.
"We lost a little bit of track position there with some stuff on pit road, but got back to third and it was a great race between me and Bubba and Larson. I’m sure Denny was gonna get back into it. It was gonna be a heck of a battle the last 60 laps or so, but it just didn’t really work out for us," Blaney said.
Sunday's misfortune marked the second blown engine over Blaney's last three starts. When coupled with a crash last weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Blaney has now failed to finish in each of the last three NASCAR Cup Series events.
It's been a miserable stretch of bad luck, but Blaney finds solace in the fact that his Team Penske organization has continued to bring incredibly fast race cars to the track the last several weekends. And he knows at some point, the bad luck is bound to break.
"We’ll continue to keep fighting. I appreciate the 12 guys for just giving me a hot rod. It was an incredibly, incredibly fast race car today. We’ll keep our heads up," Blaney stated. "It’s just one of those things where it’s not really going our way right now, but the good news is we’re bringing fast cars and that’s all you can ask for. We’ll keep on moving.”
To give you an idea of how fast Blaney and the No. 12 Team Penske group have been this season, the driver ranks 10th in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, despite suffering DNFs in half of the six races so far this year.
A combination of good results in the season-opening Daytona 500, and the following weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway in combination with a massive pile of Stage Points have saved the day for Blaney and his team, and has kept them very much above the Playoff cutline.
Blaney will look to snap his recent stretch of bad luck at the perfect race track, Martinsville Speedway, next weekend. Blaney has won two of his last three NASCAR Cup Series starts at the 0.526-mile paper clip in Virginia, and he has finished 11th or better in 12 consecutive races at the gritty short track.
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Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.