Ryan Blaney has revealed just how close he came to a serious physical issue during NASCAR's last race weekend at Sonoma. A cool suit failure left him battling dehydration, overheating, and muscle cramps in the closing laps of the 110-lap race.

In an interaction on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio shared on X on Thursday, the Team Penske driver explained his plight. When a cool suit fails, drivers have to eject the water from it so that it doesn't heat up and, in turn, overheat them.

Blaney attempted to reset the suit motor before using the CO2 cartridge to eject the water during a pit stop in stage two. But he misplaced the tool, which fell behind and under his seat. Describing the unfortunate situation, the Team Penske driver said:

"It was just a snowball effect; cool shirt stops working, my ejector tool disappears, a lot of green flag running, and I just run a bottle and a straw. Under green, you can't just grab a bottle and drink, so I couldn't really hydrate myself as I was losing all this fluid as I was kind of overheating."

With dehydration came cramps. Elaborating on the situation, Blaney added:

"Eventually, I started cramping up with about 20 laps to go. My left calf kept cramping into (Turn) 11, which is the worst spot for your brake leg to cramp. And I never knew when it was going to cramp; some laps it wouldn’t, and other laps I'd go in there it would pop up. I was trying to out-brake (Ryan) Preece one time, and as I was late on the brakes, it cramped up. I thought I was going to take both of us out, but somehow we made it out fine."

Despite these struggles, Ryan Blaney managed to finish sixth, just ahead of Connor Zilisch, who also secured his career-best finish so far. In the driver standings, the No. 12 Team Penske Ford driver occupies the third position behind Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin and is also the top-rated Ford at the moment. 

Cool suits have drawn widespread criticism from many drivers, and there have been calls to improve the system, which is prone to failure.

In April, Ty Gibbs was also quite vocal about his dislike for the same. 

Ty Gibbs: "Rip ‘em all out"

Gibbs, who won his first Cup race at Bristol on April 12 after a 130-race winless streak, dropped his own take on the matter sometime before the next race at Kansas.

As shared by reporter Claire B Lang on X, the 23-year-old JGR driver called for tougher and more physical racing by doing away with cooling suits, as it would add to the entertainment aspect.

“I think we should rip all the cool suits out of everyone’s cars and make it a more physical sport," Gibbs said. "I think that would be very entertaining and bring out more emotion, obviously. I think no cool suits — rip ‘em all out."

"I think, honestly, people would be pumped with that, ‘cause half the time they break on everybody and make it worse. I think we should rip all of it out, make it more physical."

While Gibbs felt cooling suits should not be used, his teammate Denny Hamlin typically never uses one at all. 

Read more at Daytona Racing Digest 

Written by

Aaradhya Singh

Edited by

Yash Kotak