'Hi, Uncle Ryan!' Blaney Laughs at In-Race Radio Surprise

Bob Pockrass

FOX Motorsports Insider

With 187 laps left Saturday night at Bristol Motor Speedway, Ryan Blaney heard a familiar voice on his in-car radio.

But it wasn’t a voice he’d expect to hear on the radio.

“Hi, Uncle Ryan,” the voice said. “Win this race.”

Blaney recognized the voice. It belonged to his 4-year-old nephew, Bodhi.

“’Get Bodhi off the scanner,” Blaney said after a chuckle. “He found [my wife] Gianna’s scanner in the bus and found out how to turn it on. Pretty smart.”

Blaney’s spotter, Tim Fedewa, replied: “Pretty awesome.”

There actually is a whole back story to the exchange, which Blaney shared Tuesday morning during a media availability with reporters.

“My two nephews were at the race,” he said. “They’re 4 and 6. They were in the bus beforehand and Gianna, my wife, has a radio in the bus where she can listen. Neither of us knew that the button worked. I thought it was an obsolete button to where they have that as far as they can make the button not work if you push it, but apparently it does.

“The 4-year-old was talking to me before the race. He’s like, ‘What’s that thing with Aunt Gianna’s name on it?’ I was like, ‘It’s a radio to where Aunt Gianna can listen to my racing.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, like a walkie-talkie.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, kind of like a walkie-talkie,’”

Blaney didn’t think anything of it — until he heard Bodhi on the radio.

“I guess he took that and remembered it,” Blaney said. “He’s a smart kid. He figured it out and turned it on and pushed the button and gave me a little bit of motivation. That was pretty cool.

“It was at a great time. It was under caution. There was not much going on, and I got a real good kick out of it. We all did. All of my team got a good kick out of it, so that was funny, and I knew right away who it was.”

Bodhi isn’t apparently just smart. He also is opportunistic. Blaney’s mom had apparently went to the microwave and that was Bodhi’s opportunity to talk to his uncle.

“My mother was mortified because she was with them,” Blaney said. “She turned around to microwave something for two seconds and they somehow got the radio.

“But I think that was the first time I was genuinely shocked of hearing a certain human being’s voice on the radio.”

It was a good shock.

“It was a point in the race where there were a lot of cautions after cautions, so that was a nice moment of levity of just a little break,” Blaney said.

But it likely won’t happen again.

“We’ve got to get that button worked on to where no one pushed it on accident,” Blaney said. “He’s a smart kid. I wouldn’t have known how to do that at 4 years old, but he figured it out.”

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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