Ryan Blaney came from nearly three seconds back to challenge teammate Joey Logano for the Phoenix race win and Cup Series championship, but he simply ran out of time to get the job done. At the checkered flag, he was 0.330s away from becoming a back-to-back NASCAR Cup Series champion, and he was worn out. The AMR Safety Team tended to him on pit road after the race.
"I was tired, man," said Blaney. "I was driving hard and huffing and puffing and felt like I was going to pass out after the race. I was working hard trying to close the gap down. There were a lot of similarities to last week and just didn't quite get there this week."
