Michael McDowell approached Ryan Blaney on pit road after wreck at New Hampshire

Late in the USA Today 301 after all of the weather and tire adversity, Ryan Blaney was wrecked by Michael McDowell. No back-to-back wins for the NASCAR champion.

Ryan Blaney was in a great position to at least compete for the win with Christopher Bell. However, on a late restart, the 12 car was cleaned out by Michael McDowell. It was an absolute kick to the gut for Blaney.

Instead of a top-5 finish, Blaney had to settle for P25. A long, six-hour day on the track was not rewarded with much for Blaney and his team.

After the race, Ryan Blaney talked about Michael McDowell wrecking him. McDowell did apologize after the race, but the damage was done.

“I know he’s got to win and all that and that’s his excuse but you have to like calculate, be a little more calculated than that and just stinks that we’re at the expense of it,” Blaney said. “But man, I thought we had a decent shot to contend. I was happy because we came in, put tires on, made a big adjustment and I was looking forward to kind of restarting behind Bell and seeing if we could have anything for him and just never really got a chance.”

This is not what Ryan Blaney wanted out of today. It was a long, hard race. The rain delay and use of wet weather tires made it even more difficult than normal. Things got absolutely bonkers late with cars slipping and sliding and wrecking every which way.

Unfortunately, for Blaney, he was one of the cars involved in the deluge of incidents at the end. NASCAR did learn a lot in New Hampshire about racing in damp conditions.

Ryan Blaney comes up short at New Hampshire

In recent weeks, Ryan Blaney has been up and down. At least, if you look at the results. At times, finishes do not reflect the work that a driver puts into a race. That is the case with Blaney at Gateway and New Hampshire.

After back-to-back DNFs, Blaney ran out of fuel while leading at Gateway with one lap to go. Then he had a solid P7 at Sonoma. Of course, last week, we saw him dominate at Iowa on his way to his first win of the season.

This week at New Hampshire, he was a top-5 car for much of the day. He had at least put himself in position at the end of the race to be there behind Bell late. P25. Arguably, Blaney has had winning or top-5 speed in each of the last four weeks.

Ryan Blaney gets the short end of the deal this week. I think he is going to be in the mix next week at Nashville, though. Keep an eye out for this 12 team to get back to victory lane.