Race report

NASCAR Cup Texas

Blaney wins eventful first stage at Texas

Ryan Blaney scored his first stage win in Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway.

Lee Spencer

Edited: Apr 9, 2017, 8:04 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Ryan Blaney, Wood Brothers Racing Ford

Blaney led 66 laps to the Stage 1 victory. Martin Truex Jr., Jamie McMurray, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Larson, Clint Bowyer, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Joey Logano and Kyle Busch finished in the top 10.

Ford Performance dominated the first stage early. Kevin Harvick led the field to green, but after the second of three cautions, triggered by a wreck involving Gray Gaulding and Reed Sorenson, Blaney passed the No. 4 for the lead entering Turn 1. Blaney led the race until the competition caution on Lap 31. He had a 1.682-sec. lead over Harvick with 35 cars remaining on the lead lap.

Harvick regained the point out of the pits followed Blaney, Logano, Bowyer, Keselowski, Kenseth, Stenhouse, McMurray, Truex and AJ Allmendinger. Chris Buescher, who entered the pits 16th, was clipped by Erik Jones and knocked down his jackman entering the box. The No. 37 car dropped to 24th. Larson, who was busted for driving through too many boxes, restarted 37th.

Fifty laps into the contest, Blaney retained the lead followed by Harvick, Bowyer, Logano, Keselowski, Truex, McMurray, Stenhouse, Kenseth and Kahne. However, Harvick acquired debris on his grille over the next seven laps enabling Blaney to extend his advance by 3.2-seconds. By Lap 62, Truex had passed Logano for fourth and went to work on Bowyer.

Larson came from the rear of the field on the restart and passed Dale Earnhardt Jr. to move back to the top 10 on Lap 68. One lap later, Truex got by Harvick for second with 15 laps to decide the stage.

Austin Dillon failed to start the race on time after the team was forced to repair a broken truck arm. Dillon finally joined the field 11-minutes into the race and was 39th, 11 laps down at the end of the first stage.

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Cup drivers still facing a lot of unknowns at Texas Motor Speedway

Next article Blaney dominates second stage at Texas

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Ferrari promotes F2 racer to F1 reserve driver role

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Singapore GP

21 min

Ferrari promotes F2 racer to F1 reserve driver role

Employing team orders can simply be a matter of common sense

Formula 1

Employing team orders can simply be a matter of common sense

Max Verstappen risks penalty after FP1 clash at Portimao GTWC finale

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance 45 min

Max Verstappen risks penalty after FP1 clash at Portimao GTWC finale

Why Christian Horner sees history repeating itself for Adrian Newey at Aston Martin

Formula 1

Singapore GP

Why Christian Horner sees history repeating itself for Adrian Newey at Aston Martin

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts