NASCAR Star Ryan Blaney Is Shocked by an Unexpected Call

Uncle duty never stops!

NASCAR star Ryan Blaney received an unexpected call when his radio was accidentally hijacked from a special someone: his four-year-old nephew.

With 187 laps left in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday, Sept. 13, Blaney — who drives the No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang — heard a familiar voice come from his car’s scanner.

“Hi, Uncle Ryan,” said the voice, heard in a now-viral clip circling social media. “Win this race,” his nephew Bodhi added.

While Blaney later laughed at the surprising call, he said he asked his wife Gianna Blaney to mediate the situation.

“Get Bodhi off the scanner,” he said, laughing from the vehicle. “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, enjoyed the silly interaction. “Pretty awesome,” he said.

The professional driver, who’s in his eighth season for team owner Roger Penske and his 10th full-time NASCAR Cup Series season, explained the backstory behind the call, and the events that led to up to the unexpected communication.

“My two nephews were at the race and 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,” he explained in a video shared by NASCAR.

“Neither of us knew that the button worked,” he said, admitting, “I thought it was an obsolete button… to make the button not work if you push it, but apparently it does!”

Blaney remembered a conversation he had with his four-year-old nephew before the race, where he explained to him the purpose of the button (that had his wife’s name on it), allowing her to listen to his racing as it happens.

Bodhi, at the time, compared it to a walkie-talkie, he said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, kind of like a walkie-talkie!”

The “smart kid” retained the information, the proud uncle said.

“Figured it out, turned it on, pushed the button, gave me a little bit of motivation and that was pretty cool,” he said of the surprising interaction.

Blaney said the ring came at “great time,” too, noting that it happened when a caution was called.

“There was a point in the race where there were a lot of cautions after cautions, so that was a nice moment of levity and just a little break,” he explained.

Blaney admitted he knew “right away” who the caller was when he dialed in, stating it was one of his two nephews and confidently assuming it was the younger one because of their prior conversation about the radio.

As a result, the driver added that they “have to get that button worked on so no one pushes it on accident.”

“But, smart kid,” he concluded. “I wouldn’t know how to do that at four-years-old, but he figured it out!”

Blaney ended up finishing fourth, with Christopher Bell winning the race.