March 28, 2024

Blaney wins Xfinity race at Kentucky Speedway

SPARTA, Ky. (AP) — Ryan Blaney completed a Team Penske season sweep of the NASCAR Xfinity Series races at Kentucky Speedway, beating Ty Dillon in a green-white-checkered finish Saturday night.

After the record-tying 10th caution, Dillon led Blaney, Regan Smith, Chase Elliott and defending race winner Brendan Gaughan on the restart.

Blaney was inside of Dillon and got the kind of restart that he didn’t a few laps earlier when Dillon passed him. Blaney pulled away to his fourth career Xfinity victory and second this season. He also won at the track in 2013 for his first series victory.

“We were just even with (Dillon) and (Smith) gave us a good push,” said Blaney, who led 81 of the 201 laps. “That’s all it is now. Who can get a big push. Luckily, we were able to get a good one and just get a little bit of position to kind of ease up the race track to get in front of him. I knew once we were clear we had a really good shot at it.”

Team Penske teammate Brad Keselowski also won in the No. 22 Ford in July at Kentucky.

Dillon was second, 0.519 seconds behind Blaney.

Smith was third, followed by Elliott and Brandon Jones. Points leader Chris Buescher finished seventh.