Blaney “felt like I was going to pass out” after the title fight.

Ryan Blaney came back almost three seconds and challenged his teammate Joey Logano for the Phoenix race win and the Cup Series championship, but he simply ran out of time to get the job done. By the time he took the checkered flag, he was just 0.330 seconds shy of becoming a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and exhausted. The AMR Safety Team looked after him in the pit lane after the race.

“I was tired, man,” Blaney said. “I was riding hard, huffing and puffing and feeling like I was going to pass out after the race. I worked hard and tried to close the gap. There were a lot of similarities to last week and I just didn’t quite nail it this week.”

The decisive moment came on the restart on lap 259, when William Byron controlled the race with two Hendrick Motorsports teammates behind him. While Logano made a brilliant three pass to take the lead, Blaney remained trapped behind two of the Hendrick drivers. That proved to be a pivotal moment as Logano never relinquished the lead

Blaney battled hard with Kyle Larson and later Byron, but by the time he left them both behind, Logano was 2.3 seconds ahead with just over 20 laps to go.

“I’m just cornered,” Blaney said of that crucial restart. “I took sixth place. Personally, I thought the top row was probably the better one and just ended up in a weird aero position. A lot of people finished there in 1st and 2nd place ahead of me, and Joey somehow managed it, and then I only got fourth place.

“That was the result. Only Joey took the lead pretty quickly through the restart, and it worked for him. By the time I got settled in, I was fourth and had to work my ass off to get past. 5 and the 24 and Joey down and then I hadn’t spent any more on that car.

“I knew when I took it down that I would get there, but when I got there I had nothing left. Once you’re in dirty air and they start guessing where you’re going, that’s it.” That just makes it a lot harder. Yeah, just the restart, if I had just been closer, if I had finished second or something, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard and come from so far back and maybe I would have had a little bit better shot.

I just had to move forward

Even though overtaking was difficult, Blaney was one of the stronger drivers in the long run and made it work better than most by driving in wide at corner entry. However, it would never be enough against a driver with clean air.

“I just wish – I wish I had ever gotten control of the race. As if I had never taken the lead. I took the lead once, and I think the green flag stops happened or I took the lead at the end of Stage 2, Stage 2 ended, and then I got the lead back – well, me finally passed Joey for second in the third stage when the green flag cycle came, Bell pitted, I came out second – I just never got the lead.

“I felt like if I took the lead I would be gone. But it just didn’t work out. The car was great and Jonathan and these guys did a great job getting us where we needed to be.”