Top-30 NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers: Dave Blaney, 30th
Dave Blaney endured a series of setbacks in the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, but the driver of Bill Davis Racing’s No. 22 Toyota managed to remain in the top 35 in owner points for much of the year and ended it with the team locked into that group for 2009.
Blaney, 46, has long been a staple at Bill Davis Racing, running at least a partial schedule for the team since 1999. He left entirely in 2005 to run for Richard Childress Racing, but he returned to the group full time in 2006. He says he has not nailed down his plans for 2009.
The Hartford, Ohio, native had two top-10 finishes this season but finished 30th in driver points and earned $3,456,711 in purses.
During the offseason, SceneDaily is taking a look at the top 30 in 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup driver points. Here¹s how Blaney's season unfolded:
By the numbers: Blaney earned two top-10 finishes, both of ninth and both coming in a single stretch of the season. He posted a top finish of 12th in the final 22 races of the season, a stretch in which he was caught up in four accidents and suffered an engine failure.
Season highlights: Blaney and crew chief Tommy Baldwin seemed to hit on something early in the season. He earned ninth-place finishes at Darlington and Dover in May and June over a three-race stretch.
Key setbacks: Despite his early sparks, Blaney's season was decimated by seven DNFs, five caused by accidents and two by engine failures. The setbacks kept the team from capitalizing on solid runs and made it difficult to develop momentum.
Newsworthy moment: Unfortunately, the newsworthy moment for the No. 22 team came in the form of the loss of sponsorship. Caterpillar, which has been another staple for team owner Bill Davis over the years, announced that it was leaving the organization to back the No. 31 Richard Childress Racing entry of Jeff Burton in 2009.
In his words: "If you look at it as a whole, I was really disappointed in it. … As performance goes, we didn't run good at all for the first month and that kind of set us back. We were kind of searching around. In May, early June, we had some weeks there we ran pretty good, we ran good at Darlington, had a top-10, and had a couple of good runs. Dover we ran good, and thought we were on the right track and then we kind of faded again. I don't know where we were missing it much, but we just never got a consistent handle on anything. We just didn't run well near enough."
