Blaney Brings Home Top-10 in First K&N Pro Series East Start
Blaney is making strides towards his championship goals.
Ryan Blaney certainly left a solid impression in the K&N Pro Series East in his first series start on Thursday. The 17-year old driver who has already posted a Super Late Model victory this season raced his #10 Camry from an 18th-place starting spot to the 8th position when the checkers flew against some of the toughest talent in the country.
“It was good start for us,” said Blaney. “We were strong, I thought, off the trailer but we kind of struggled before the rain. Right there on lap one at the beginning of the race, we just got tight. I don’t know if we just misjudged or what but then after the rain break the car came to life.
“We got a few cars on the initial restart there and it was just too bad there weren’t many cautions to get everyone back together because our car was really good on restarts. Then it took about five laps after that to finally get going, but it was really good. I think if we could have gotten a caution at the end when we were 8th with 15-20 laps to go, I think we could have snuck in there to get a top-5.”
Blaney has one more NASCAR K&N Pro Series East start scheduled for the 2011 season, in the series next event at Iowa Speedway on May 21st where he looks to build upon what he learned in
his series debut.
“We’re really looking forward to trying to improve our qualifying,” explained Blaney. “Our first race we didn’t really know what to do for qualifying; what would be good qualifying. But I think we have a better chance at a higher finish.”
Now Blaney will change gears and step back into his PASS South Super Late Model, where he is currently leading the points standings, as the series travels to South Boston Speedway (VA).
“Now going back to the late model and into South Boston we’re really just looking to best our finish from last year,” said Blaney. “We lost the lead to our teammate Jimmy Weller with like 20 to go last year. It wasn’t all bad because we got a 1-2 finish but now I’m looking for a win. We won this year already with PASS and we ran good there last year so I’m really looking forward to going there this year and hopefully doing just a little bit better.”
