Ryan Blaney’s pit road problems flared again Sunday at Kansas Speedway, where contact with AJ Allmendinger while leaving his stall left the No. 12 car with visible splitter damage and forced Team Penske to bring it back down pit road for another look.
Blaney entered pit road running inside the top 10, but he had slipped to 15th by the end of Stage 1 after the delay and the damage check. The team then drew a penalty for too many crew members over the wall while trying to repair the splitter, a critical aerodynamic piece that can change the feel of the car in a hurry.
Jeff Gluck captured the sequence bluntly: “Ryan Blaney gets a penalty for too many crew members over the wall but they made multiple stops because they were trying to assess the damage.” It was the kind of setback that has shadowed Blaney through the first eight races of the 2026 season, when he had already lost 88 positions on pit road.
The Kansas incident fit a familiar pattern. Blaney has shown race-winning speed, but the gains on the track have repeatedly been undercut by mistakes and losses on pit road. Sunday added another chapter to that problem, with a clean run undone by a contact-filled stop and the scramble that followed.
For Blaney, the question is no longer whether he has the pace to contend. It is whether the pit road issues that have cost him so much this season can be cleaned up before they erase another strong finish.
