Ryan Blaney and his fiancee, Gianna Tulio, shared plenty of special moments during Blaney's drive toward the 2023 NASCAR Cup championship, and the Netflix "NASCAR: Full Speed" documentary series was along for the ride for much of it.
Blaney and Tulio celebrated the 2023 Cup Series championship victory together, but the season included fear-provoking elements along with those of triumph.
The moment was during the regular-season finale at Daytona. As Blaney led the Coke Zero Sugar 400, he was taken out in a hard and scary crash.
Blaney hit the wall in a way that eerily mirrored the crash that killed Dale Earnhardt in 2001.
Blaney and Tulio recalled the hard crash during the third episode of "NASCAR: Full Speed."
According to Ryan Gaydos from Fox News, the pair were at home rewatching the wreck and Blaney asked her what was going on in her mind when the crash happened.
"I froze. I didn't know what to think at first," Tulio said. "I was just waiting to hear your voice on the radio so I knew you were OK."
The wreck saw Blaney crash head-on into the wall after he was hit in the right rear by Ty Gibbs' No. 54 car. The wreck involved 16 cars, and Blaney admitted during the episode that he was shaken up by the wreck.
"Before I knew it, I was hitting the fence. I saw the whiteness of the wall the very last second, and then I'm hitting it," Blaney said. "And then you take a while to catch your breath. It took me 2 or 3 minutes to get my bearings together."
That crash was a tough moment to witness both live and again in the Netflix series. The crashes during that race were some of the worst in several years at Daytona.
The dangers of the sport are real, but luckily with the safety enhancements that NASCAR has made, Blaney walked away from the wreck.
