Childress: Blaney in No. 30 through Brickyard

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- NASCAR veteran Dave Blaney came to Michigan International Speedway this weekend with no less than a six-race trial run in Richard Childress Racing's No. 30 Chevrolet.

	Johnny Sauter's best finish in 13 races was 14th. Credit: Autostock

On Saturday morning, Childress said Blaney's crash Friday on his Bud Pole Qualifying lap would have no effect on those plans.

"Most definitely," Childress said. "His car was real good (in practice) and he said it had a lot left in it. He was going to go for it and I said 'go for it.'

"You'd rather see somebody going for it than just (riding). He could have got him a good lap and been comfortable but I thought we were going to have a decent shot at the pole because Robby (Gordon) picked up real well and I felt like he was right there were Robby was.

"It just didn't work out."

Blaney himself joked about having a short tenure in the car if he continued to wreck it, but then got serious after explaining the car was loose and just got away from him.

"We'll just keep going hard," Blaney said. "You don't get anywhere running easy, so we'll just keep running hard."

On a phone call Wednesday evening to Dave Despain's "Wind Tunnel" interactive show on Speed Channel, Childress explained his rationale for putting Blaney in the car in place of Johnny Sauter.

	Richard Childress

Childress said Blaney would be in the car for at least six races, including Sunday's DHL 400 at Michigan and events at Daytona, Chicagoland, New Hampshire, Pocono and Indianapolis.

RCR had previously announced that West Coast Late Model veteran Jim Inglebright would drive its No. 30 car at Infineon Raceway next weekend.

Childress said he hoped Blaney's trial is successful enough to warrant leaving the former Sprint Car champion in the car through the end of the season.

"We're just going to try Dave here and see what goes on," Childress said. "We're going to run him through Indy for sure, and see how things go.

"We want to see how Johnny's progressing and how things are going. Dave's a great guy and I think he's got a tremendous amount of talent."

Childress re-iterated that Sauter remained under contract to RCR and would continue to test its Winston Cup cars and run an undetermined number of races later this season.

"I've got a lot of confidence in Johnny Sauter's ability," Childress said. "But at this point we felt like we needed to do something different with the AOL Chevy, so we're going to put Dave Blaney in the car for a little while and see how the rest of the season goes."

Sauter had run both the No. 30 Chevrolet and the No. 27 Chevrolet for Brewco Motorsports in the Busch Series through the events at Dover International Speedway earlier this month.

Blaney had a one-race deal at Pocono Raceway last weekend to run the car, and the semi-permanent change was announced Wednesday.

Childress said plans to facilitate Sauter running in both series went away due to Sauter's position in the Nextel Cup points.

"When we started talking about what we were going to do we knew we were going to have some conflicts (trying to run both series)," Childress said. "If we could have been around the top-10 in the (Nextel Cup) points -- we had a number there (in mind) that if he was up there he was going to miss a few Busch races.

"I think we were 23rd (in points) after Charlotte so at that point we decided it was time that we'd let him go follow the Busch Series and to see what would happen."