The Last Two Weeks Haven't Been the Most Fun, Ryan Blaney Breaks Down His Points Slide and the Long Game He's Playing Against Tyler Reddick

Through ten races of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, Ryan Blaney has a win, multiple top-five finishes, and a car fast enough to lead laps at nearly every track the series has visited. He is sitting third in the driver standings, firmly inside the playoff picture, and is widely considered one of the two or three most complete drivers in the field on raw pace.

None of that is what the 2023 Cup champion is talking about when he steps away from the No. 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang and faces a microphone. What he is talking about is the arithmetic problem that has defined his season since April, i.e., how to close a gap to Tyler Reddick that keeps growing faster than he can chip away at it.

Following the Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, Race 10 of 26 in the regular season, Tyler Reddick holds the points lead at 484, with Denny Hamlin second at 374, Blaney third at 344, and Chase Elliott fourth at 340. The 140-point deficit Blaney faces is substantial, but not insurmountable in a sport where a single win and a competitor’s bad day can shift the standings in ways that reward patience. Blaney knows this.

He has said it publicly, calmly, and with the specificity of a driver who has lived through exactly these kinds of points swings across nine seasons with Team Penske and two deep postseason runs that went to the Championship 4. What he also knows, and what he acknowledged in the interview that prompted this piece, is that the last two weeks, Kansas and Talladega, were not the kind of Sundays that close gaps.

Blaney is chasing a driver delivering one of the most historically dominant regular-season stretches in the modern era, in a car that has matched him on pace and bettered him in execution for the better part of three months. Reddick has won five of the first nine races of 2026, becoming the first driver to achieve that feat since Dale Earnhardt in 1987. He drives the No. 45 Toyota for 23XI Racing, a team co-owned by Denny Hamlin, who is simultaneously Blaney’s second-most relevant standings rival, and basketball legend Michael Jordan.

1. Ryan Blaney’s Calculated Strategy to Dominate Hamlin and Elliott While Chasing Reddick

During a recent interview, Blaney said, “Last two weeks we’ve lost a lot of points to him (Riddick). You know, we kind of closed it up there after Bristol. I think we were within like 70 or something, and then the last couple weeks haven’t been very good. You know, so we know he’s a long ways out. So the best thing we can do is like, hey, how do we kind of race around the guys that we’re close to right now, with the 11 and the 9 and a couple other guys that are right there.” “Hopefully we can run good enough to where we keep chipping back into Tyler’s lead. So it’s going to be tough to get there, but points flow a lot, you know. It can flow a lot in this deal, especially if you can win and the guy around you doesn’t have a good day or something, it can really flip the script. So we just gotta get back on trying to get smoothed out a little bit. Last two weeks haven’t been the most fun,” he concluded.

2. Two Weeks of Chaos: How Disaster Strikes at Kansas and Talladega Tanked Blaney’s Championship Momentum

Blaney did not come into this stretch of the schedule in bad shape. Through Bristol in early April, he had raced his way into what looked like a strong position to challenge for the regular season championship. After Bristol, Blaney held second in the standings with 324 points, 62 points behind Reddick’s 386. He had one win, strong stage points, and showed speed at virtually every track the series had visited. He carried a series-high 81 stage points and the third-most laps led in the field with 244 through eight events, meaning the pace of the No. 12 Ford had been undeniable even when results did not fully reflect it. Then came Kansas. Blaney finished a lap down in 24th place at Kansas Speedway, picking up just 13 points from the day and getting leapfrogged in the standings by Denny Hamlin, who took fourth place. The contact came on pit road with AJ Allmendinger, which damaged his right-front fender, and Blaney never recovered. Reddick went on to win in overtime, his fifth victory of the season. After Kansas, Reddick had extended his commanding lead to 105 points, the largest margin of his dominant season to that point. Blaney had slid to third and was no longer just chasing Reddick. He was suddenly in a three-driver battle for second. At Talladega, Blaney was collected in the massive crash during Stage 2, the “Big One” on lap 113, that involved 26 cars and brought out a ten-minute red flag. He ultimately finished outside the top 20 in a race won by Carson Hocevar. The superspeedway, historically one of Blaney’s better venues (he is a three-time winner at Talladega, most recently in the fall of 2023) offered nothing this time around. Reddick finished 14th, his worst result of the season, yet still extended his lead because the field bunched up. The gap ballooned to 140 points.

3. Inside the Pit Road Deficit That Forced Team Penske’s Dramatic Crew Change

The arithmetic challenge Blaney faces is not purely about Tyler Reddick’s pace. It has been compounded by a persistent operational problem at the No. 12 pit box that, by any objective measure, represents the largest gap between Blaney’s on-track talent and his race results in the 2026 season. Through eight races, the No. 12 pit crew ranked 35th out of 36 full-time entries in season-long metrics, with an average four-tire exchange time of 12.54 seconds, 35th in the series, while committing a series-worst six mistakes. The crew had lost 88 total positions on pit road, with a position-retention rate of just 51 percent. The significance of that number, 88 positions lost in eight races, is difficult to overstate. In Blaney’s three races where the No. 12 car lost considerable track position, he rebounded to a podium effort each time, including his victory at Phoenix, where the team relinquished 48 spots on pit road due to two loose tires that needed to be tightened by a fellow Penske team further down pit lane. Team Penske made a jackman change ahead of Kansas, bringing in experienced veteran Graham Stoddard, who had previously been part of Blaney’s crew, to replace Landon Honeycutt, a first-year full-time Cup Series jackman. The change was a delayed acknowledgment of what had become unavoidable. Blaney’s car had been the benchmark within Team Penske all season, consistently outpacing teammates Austin Cindric and Joey Logano on speed. The car was in contention; the pit stops were not keeping up with it. What made the situation particularly revealing was the raw pace that Blaney demonstrated despite it. At Bristol, the No. 12 led 190 of 505 laps before finishing second, losing 11 positions on pit road in the process. A driver leading 190 laps at a half-mile short track has the equipment to win races. The fact that he has only one win to show for ten races in 2026 is, in significant part, a testament to the operational deficit that the team has been working to address.

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