BRISTOL, Tenn. Ryan Blaney scored his second consecutive fifth-place finish in Sundays Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway.

But it was a circuitous route Blaney took to the finish line as the team gambled on pit strategy in an effort to steal a victory. Blaney led 48 laps before having to pit with 60 laps remaining at the .533-mile concrete oval.

It was just kind of a learning thing all day. The first run of the race nobody really knew what the tires were going to do and everyone kind of just rode around there a little bit and we finally got going and we went so long, Blaney said. Then it was like, Alright, we can go a little bit harder. The track widened out, which was good. I honestly dont know if I really anticipated that with the track getting wide and really not having tire problems. Im glad thats the way it was. I think it put on a pretty decent race.

There were a lot of comers and goers, except for the lead, I guess, but it was a pretty fun day and a really good finish. We kind of took a chance of running really long there, seeing if wed get a caution and then we finally bailed and had to make all the ground up and got back to fifth. Overall, it was a solid weekend.

Blaney felt the gamble was worth taking as he was able to charge back through the field after pitting and finish fifth on fresher tires.

Yeah, it was worth it. I thought it was a good move just in case someone blew a tire or something, but for a while we had everybody lapped and that was the long shot play to try and win the race, the 2023 Cup Series champion said. I was fifth before that cycle started, so it was nice that we got back up there for how long we ran. I didnt have a ton of laps to make it back up, but, overall, it was a good call by Jonathan. It was the chance to catch a break and it didnt really come, but it was a good weekend.

Blaney is pleased with how his team is performing.

Honestly, our cars have been really good and Im happy to where our speed has been, Blaney said. We had just a few bad weeks of not finishing the race from motor problems and getting caught up in a wreck. The last two weeks of just having good races.

We had a car that could win last week and it just really didnt work out. Today, I might have been able to run third, but I thought about third through sixth or seventh is where I was gonna be and just really proud that we had a couple weeks that were just like a normal race and we finished where we were running, so that part is always good.