Ryan Blaney’s pit road woes followed him into his race at Bristol as yet another good performance from him was undermined by his crew. Now, even his rivals have started to call out the pit road issues the Team Penske star has been facing.
Kyle Larson credits Ryan Blaney’s pit road woes to his finish
Kyle Larson, who finished third at Bristol, addressed the race in an interview. While he was a little excited about his finish, the 2025 champion pointed out what happened to Ryan Blaney, who finished in second place after starting the race from the pole.
“Blaney had the best car by far, but his pit crew kept putting him behind all day, which really allowed us to lead a lot of laps and get those stage wins,” said Larson. “So that was good, happy about all of that. Just knew it was going to be difficult to hold him off forever, and seem like at every restart he could just plough right through the field and get to second, and then he was really fast,” Larson described.
Kyle Larson led 284 laps and swept the stages at Bristol, but finished two spots short of his first race win since May of last year (Kansas). pic.twitter.com/SEomUOZeve
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) April 12, 2026
Blaney has been patient throughout the year, but at one point during the race in Bristol, he called out his pit crew after yet another disappointing stop.
“Clean it up, guys. We cannot be losing five spots every time we come down pit road,” Blaney said.
Some estimates suggest that, owing to his pit crew issues, Ryan Blaney has lost 88 spots on the pit road. Despite that, he already has one win to his name this season, which was also tainted with pit road issues, as well as two top- 5 finishes and three top- 10s.
This makes one wonder if Blaney could’ve brought more wins to Roger Penske this season with a better pit crew. However, the #12 driver, as well as Team Penske, isn’t exactly interested in taking a radical step.
Ryan Blaney had full faith in his crew despite the problems
“I do think from an equipment and choreography side, that can improve. Landon is still with us this weekend, and we’re going to let him keep growing and learning and hopefully, from a personnel and equipment standpoint, we can kind of clean that up and find better ways to do things,” he said.
Similarly, Travis Geisler, Team Penske’s vice president of competition, expressed his faith and patience in the pit crew. He said that Penske tweaks things to make them better, but currently, he has full faith in the #12 team’s pit crew.
“I think the personnel that we have involved there are awesome. I mean, that group is lights out when they’re on. I think there’s some things we need to do better from the team side of things to make their jobs a little easier,” he added.
The Penske executive admitted that some areas need work. But he also mentioned that, on average, no team in the garage has perfect days on a weekly level.
With Blaney performing the way he is, it is only fair for him to expect his crew to deliver top standards. He is in pole position to possibly finish at the top spot, but if his pit stops continue to be problematic, especially later in the season, things could get tricky for the Team Penske star.
