Ryan Blaney says he’s feeling tremendous after complaining of a headache final weekend after taking a driver’s facet hit throughout observe at Las Vegas Motor Speedway due to a tire puncture.
Within the race the next day, he was concerned in a multi-car crash on lap 89 on the frontstretch when Brad Keselowski clipped his automobile as Keselowski got here again throughout the racetrack.
The hit additionally broke the toe hyperlink, and that didn’t assist issues both as Blaney described flopping round within the cockpit as he drove his broken automobile again to pit street.
“I’m feeling all proper,” Blaney informed reporters at Homestead-Miami in a video posted by Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports activities. “Yeah, a few exhausting hits. I’ve had extra exhausting hits than I’d like, particularly lately within the final yr and a half or so, two years. However I’m doing OK.
“Our group does an excellent job of doing all we are able to within the automobile to strive to ensure we’re as secure as we might be, and there’s another tweaks with the automobile that we’ve acquired to proceed to work on. However I’m feeling all proper.”
Blaney requested for Advil or one thing of that nature to assist his head throughout final Sunday’s race. He admitted afterwards his head was “killing me,” and he acquired quick aid from what his Workforce Penske group gave him nevertheless it began to harm once more earlier than the checkered flag.
In 2023, Blaney had two frontal impacts that he spoke at size about due to their lingering results. Blaney crashed right into a wall that was not protected with a SAFER barrier at Nashville Superspeedway in June, and stated he had concussion-like signs the week after. However he didn’t miss a race and labored with Dr. Michael Collins of the College of Pittsburgh Medical Middle’s Sports activities Medication Concussion program within the days after the Nashville race.
Blaney additionally crashed head-first at Daytona Worldwide Speedway in August when he was right-rear hooked within the draft in Flip 4. As a result of he wears an information mouthpiece, Blaney stated the Daytona crash registered at a 70G affect.
When requested if there must be extra modifications to the Subsequent Gen automobile to assist with impacts, Blaney stated “undoubtedly” and it’s one thing to be mentioned with NASCAR in the course of the offseason.
“I plan on doing that,” Blaney stated. “I really feel like they’ve performed a very good job of serving to the entrance and the rear impacts; these have been sort of the massive issues and I’ve had the unlucky pleasure of feeling plenty of the massive entrance and rear impacts, they usually have gotten higher.
“That was sort of my first huge hit with a facet affect, so I really feel like the subsequent step is how do you get the middle part of those vehicles to be slightly bit extra forgiving. We’ve labored the entrance, rear, and performed a reasonably good job.
“You take a look at the automobile final week after the observe crash, and it simply appeared prefer it was scraped on the left facet. There was no enormous physique harm. It’s simply all brick proper there. So, we’ve acquired to do some bit and hopefully we are able to determine that out and assist these impacts.”
