Blaney thought he had Darlington nailed, until he didn't...

Ryan Blaney thought he had a NASCAR Cup Series win at Darlington Raceway within his grasp.

The one thing no driver wants to see happen late in the day happened when the caution flew with four laps to go in the Goodyear 400. Blaney took the lead off Turn 2 from Tyler Reddick when Bubba Wallace spun Kyle Larson behind them. Larson appeared to slow in reaction to Reddick running wide and hitting the wall as Blaney passed him, which Wallace was not expecting.

Blaney then lost the lead on pit road. He came off behind Denny Hamlin, who went on to win the race, Reddick, and William Byron. Although he chose to restart on the inside of the second row, he faded to a fifth-place finish.

“If the caution didn’t come out, I thought we had it won easily,” Blaney said. “We were so much faster on newer tires. It was a great strategy call running long. Those guys short-pitted, and they were struggling real bad, and I thought if we could have just got off of 2 with the lead and the caution didn’t come out, I thought I was going to kind of ride off into the sunset.

“That’s just not how it worked, unfortunately. We lost the lead on pit road, lost a front-row starting spot, and never had a shot.”

Strategy calls put Blaney in position to win Sunday after Byron dominated the event. By running long, Blaney had about three laps of fresher tires than the leaders when the final green flag cycle was completed. He erased a 7.5s deficit from fourth position to catch and pass Reddick.

“I’m proud of the effort that we had,” Blaney said. “I’m obviously disappointed in the result. I thought we could have won the race and had a good shot at winning the race. We did the last run perfectly. I thought our pit call was fantastic, and our car was fast enough to stay. It had a lot of speed in it late, but a late yellow, and then lost the lead off pit road.

“We didn’t even get to start on the front row, and you’re not going to go from fourth to first in a green-white-checkered here, so it just wasn’t meant to be, but proud of the effort.”

Sunday was Blaney’s first top-10 finish since the second race of the season when he finished fourth at Atlanta Motor Speedway.