- Ryan Blaney won the Homestead-Miami season finale on Nov 8, then suffered an undisclosed injury in a fall on Monday evening, per Motorsport.com.
- The Team Penske Ford driver skipped Tuesday’s NASCAR awards banquet and pulled out of Wednesday’s Ford charity race at Daytona.
- Blaney finished fourth in the final standings with four wins, and the next points race is about three months away.
From Two Years of Nightmares to a Fall at Dinner
“I tell you, last two years I’ve had nightmares about that finish (smiling),” Ryan Blaney said in the winner’s press conference at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday. “It’s nice to get a little redemption from that.”
The next evening, the same driver took a fall that required medical attention. By Tuesday he had posted a short statement to social media, and he would not be at the NASCAR awards banquet.
The turn came fast. Blaney won on Sunday, and by Monday evening he was dealing with an injury he has not described. He gave no details of the fall or of what he hurt, and this story will not guess at them.
The 2024 Memory and the 2026 Pass
The redemption had a clear starting point. In 2024, Blaney lost the Homestead race in rough fashion. He held the lead entering Turn 3 on the final lap, and Tyler Reddick ripped around his outside to snatch the win from the No. 12 Team Penske Ford.
Two years later, the script flipped. Reddick led into Turn 3 with one lap to go, and this time Blaney went around the top and raced by to take the win. Reddick drives for 23XI Racing and finished second. He had already shown that he could get the better of Blaney this fall, when Reddick had edged him at Phoenix in October.
Blaney spoke about the choice a leader faces on a track as wide as Homestead, where drivers can run anywhere from the white line to the wall.
“There’s the leader, trying to pick what lane is going to be the best,” Blaney said. “If you choose wrong, you can really hurt yourself. That’s what happened to me a couple years ago. I chose wrong on lanes. I bet if you ask him, he probably would have made a different decision, too, the lap prior.”
He added a line about the man he beat. “It’s fun to race Tyler. He and I race with a lot of respect. It’s always fun to go up against guys like that.”
Then came the sentence that settled the matter for him. “It’s fun battles like that. I think we’re even now. That makes me feel a little bit better than I did a couple years ago.”
Reddick, the loser this time, said he did not see Blaney coming. “I haven’t seen a replay yet, but it was Denny (Hamlin), (William) Byron, and out of nowhere here comes (Blaney) through those guys quick, and just from my seat it seemed like he was really good around the bottom of (turns) 3 and 4 so I tried to at least keep him behind me until we go there. Me being me, I felt like if it played out how I wanted it to, I would have stalled his momentum out and ran the top of (turns) 3 and 4, but he just had too big of a run, I think. I blocked low and it seemed in the moment he was still able to break the plane of my back bumper, and I lost the ability to have the top lane. Very fitting that it played out the way that it did but pretty much exactly the same as what we did in 2024. Thanks to Toyota and everyone at 23XI Racing for a great season.”
A Fall at Dinner on Monday
Blaney’s own account of Monday night is brief. He was out at dinner with his family and some friends, and he calls the fall an accident.
“I was out at dinner last night with my family and some friends and I accidentally took a fall that required medical attention,” Blaney said in a statement posted to social media. “I am doing okay and am resting and recovering.”
He went on: “I’m disappointed to miss celebrating Kyle Larson and the NASCAR Championship today and Ford’s “Proud to Honor race” tomorrow at Daytona. While I won’t be there, l will be supporting my teammates and fellow Ford drivers as they honor each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces on Veterans Day.”
The statement named two things he gave up. The first was Tuesday’s end of year NASCAR awards banquet and the celebration of Larson’s title. Larson clinched his third Cup championship, and his second in a row, with a fourth place finish in the first stage of the finale, and he finished the race 12th. Larson’s title run was the story the room was there to mark.
The second was the Ford Proud to Honor Veterans Day Classic, a charity race at Daytona International Speedway on Wednesday that features Ford drivers from NASCAR and beyond, all in Ford Mustangs. Blaney was set to represent the U.S. Marine Corps alongside drift racer Ben Hobson. Robert Noaker replaces him in the lineup.
The event honors each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, and Blaney had the Marines. He will not be at Daytona, and his statement says he will back his Ford teammates from afar instead.
A High Note Without a Title
The Homestead win came on a night when Blaney had no championship at stake. He ended the year fourth in the standings, and the finale came down to the work and a handful of points positions.
“Yeah, definitely went out on a high note,” Blaney said of his latest victory. “We weren’t racing for a championship this weekend, so it’s just, okay, what are your goals? The goal is to try to win the race. There were some points positions we could make up. We were able to do that tonight, which is great for our group.”
He kept going, and the second half of his answer was about his crew rather than himself.
“You just want to end on a high note. If you’re not running for a championship, you want to win the last race. Unfortunately not racing for a championship, but it’s good momentum for the winner. It’s nice to celebrate with those guys one last time.”
“They did a great job. The Chase that we had just wasn’t good enough. Had too many blemishes. Other than that, I’m really proud how we ran the last 10 weeks. We just didn’t have the finishes that we needed to kind of contend.”
“They should be proud of themselves. It’s nice to drive for a great team. Even though we weren’t in the championship race this weekend, they put their head down and really went to work and gave as much effort as if we were racing for a championship.”
On the track, his own description of the closing laps was just as plain. “We restarted third and went to fourth, so I just tried to pick the lane I thought was gonna go the best. We did a good job getting to second. I was able to wrap the bottom really well on both ends and was able to inch up on some guys and I got a really good corner of one and two. (Tyler Reddick) protected on the bottom and I was able to get to his right-rear and hold him off for the last lap. It’s was some really cool fight by this team for coming back the way we did and just bringing a really fast car and working on it all night. That’s a fun end to the season. You definitely want to end on a high note. We hated coming in here and not having a shot to win a championship, but the best thing we could do was try to win the race and get as much points as we can and we’ll see where it takes us, so I was really happy we were able to execute that today and get all we could.”
Back to Back Finales and a Name From the Past
The finish at Homestead fits a habit. Blaney has placed first or second in the season finale in each of the last five years. He has also won the finale in consecutive years, each time with a late pass at a different track: Phoenix in 2025 and Homestead in 2026.
The late Greg Biffle was the last driver to win the season finale in back to back years, taking three in a row from 2004 through 2006, before Blaney matched the feat. Earlier this season, Blaney’s second win at Phoenix in March, his 18th career victory, completed a Team Penske weekend sweep.
Three Months to Recover
The sequence is hard to miss. A driver who spent two years replaying one lap got that lap back, and within a day a fall at a family dinner kept him from the events that close a season. Blaney says he is doing okay and is resting and recovering. With the next points-paying race about three months off, he has time to do it. When he next climbs into the No. 12 Team Penske Ford, he will do it as the man who ended his season by winning at Homestead.
