Ryan Blaney Starts Off 2011 Season Ninth at Lanier

Ryan Blaney took a new color scheme to a top-10 finish at Lanier.

Ryan Blaney kicked off his 2011 season with a strong sixth-place finish at Lanier National Speedway (GA) on Sunday, January 30th in the CRA SpeedFest event.  Blaney rebounded from a disappointing qualifying run to work his way to the front in the 200-lap feature, then had to fight back again after a mid-race incident.  The hard work continued for Blaney in the final 100-lap segment of the event as he workd his way back through traffic once again.

Still, Blaney was able to overcome the odds to score a top-10 finish which got the ball rolling on a big 2011 racing year.

"In qualifying, we messed up and that put us deep in the field.  We were coming up pretty good, but got in a wreck and that set us back a little bit.  It seemed like every restart in the second half, I would get stuck behind a slow car in the line that would just hold everyone up.  I just kept losing spots.  I could make some of them up, but every restart it was hard.  But, we ended up ninth, which isn’t terrible, but we could do a little bit better.

"I think having a little beat-up racecar and finishing in the top-10 with it is a good thing confidence-wise.  We’ll go to the Rattler and see what we can do there."

Blaney's next race will be at the 35th Annual Rattle 250 Weekend at South Alabama Speedway in Opp, Alabama, March 4th through 6th.