Blaney is feeling “pretty good” after suffering headaches in Vegas

Ryan Blaney says he is feeling well after complaining of a headache last weekend after hitting a driver in the side following a flat tire during practice at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The next day’s race he was involved in a multi-car accident on lap 89 on the front stretch when Brad Keselowski hit his car as Keselowski was returning to the race track.

The impact also broke a toe, which also didn’t help, as Blaney described thrashing around in the cockpit as he drove the damaged car back to pit road.

“I feel good,” Blaney told reporters in Homestead-Miami in a video posted by Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass. “Yes, some hard hits. I’ve had more hard hits than I would like, especially recently in the last year and a half, so two years. But I’m doing OK.

“Our team is doing a good job of doing everything we can on the car to make sure we are as safe as possible, but there are a few other tweaks to the car that we need to continue to work on. But I feel good.”

Blaney asked for Advil or something like that to help with his head during Sunday’s race. He admitted later that his “head was killing him” and he was briefly relieved by what Team Penske had given him, but before the checkered flag he started hurting again.

In 2023, Blaney had two head-on collisions, which he spoke about in detail because of their lingering effects. In June, Blaney hit a wall at Nashville Superspeedway that was not protected by a SAFER barrier, and a week later he said he had symptoms consistent with a concussion. He didn’t miss a race, however, and a few days after the Nashville race, he worked with Dr. Michael Collins of the sports medicine program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Blaney also crashed headfirst at Daytona International Speedway in August when he was caught by the right rear engine in turn four. Because he wears a data mouthpiece, Blaney said the Daytona crash was recorded at an impact of 70 Gs.

Asked if more changes would be needed to the next-generation car to mitigate the impact of impacts, Blaney replied “definitely” and it’s something that should be discussed with NASCAR in the offseason.

“I’m going to do it,” Blaney said. “I feel like they did a really good job of helping with the front and rear impacts; these were really important things and I had the unfortunate pleasure of feeling many strong blows from the front and back, and now it was better.

“That was kind of my first big side impact, so I feel like the next step is to make the midsection of these cars a little more forgiving. We worked front and back and did a pretty good job.

“You look at the car last week after the training accident and it looks like it has been scratched on the left side. There was no major body damage. It’s just all brick there. So we need to do a little bit and hopefully we can address this and help with these impacts.