NASCAR Cup Series star Ryan Blaney has issued his latest verdict on Team Penske’s pit road struggles after demanding improvement from his No. 12 crew last month.
Blaney’s call for better performance came after the Cup Series race at Darlington, where he eventually came home in third, but once again had significant troubles with his pit stops.
In that particular race, Blaney came in for a change of tires and fuel relatively early on in the race, but when doing so, his team had failed to adequately tighten the lug nut on one of his wheels. Blaney noticed this issue as he was pulling away, but he was forced to stop in teammate Austin Cindric’s pit box as a result, so that they could tighten it up, and for that, NASCAR penalized him and sent him to the rear of the field, making his comeback to third all the more impressive.
Unfortunately, it was part of a wider problem with the No. 12 crew at Team Penske so far this season, with FOX broadcaster Mike Joy revealing that they ranked 33rd out of the 36 full-time crews at that point of the season.
Post-race, Blaney was clear that the team needed to work on their pit road performance moving forward, and things were better at Martinsville last time out, where Blaney registered another finish inside the top-10 (6th) and may well have challenged for the victory had Denny Hamlin not put him in the wall in stage three.
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Ryan Blaney on Team Penske pit crew performance
“I thought those guys put together a really good day at Martinsville,” Blaney said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “You know, really didn’t have any mistakes. So they bonded together, you’re right.
“It’s kind of been a big talk [talking point] of you know, our loose wheel problems and stuff like that, but I think we just go through this, right? We have a new Jackman and it takes a little bit of time to create that bond with everybody and create that rhythm and timing.”
Blaney continued, comparing racing to trying to execute as quickly as possible on pit road.
“That stuff’s so tricky because you want to be fast, right? You’re pushing it all the time, those guys are, and when you’re on the edge like this, it’s just like racing; sometimes you make mistakes trying to be the fastest,” Blaney explained.
“I could go out there and run half a second off the pace and never make a mistake all day, but if I’m trying to push it to the edge of the limit, then I might make a mistake and hit the fence or something. It’s the same thing with those guys, right? They could slow down half a second, but now you’re losing half a second on pit road.
“So they’re working on the brink of perfection, and, you know, they might just make a mistake every now and then, but I was proud of them for understanding, ‘Hey, we have to get better here,’ and just continuing to work.”
No crew changes for Blaney and Penske
Often when teams encounter pit road issues consistently, they opt for a change in personnel and swap out one or two crew members to try to rectify the issues.
Blaney, though, believes in the group that he has at his disposal and their potential to be one of the best crews in the Cup Series.
“We didn’t want to make any changes,” the Team Penske star added.
“We wanted those guys to just keep working on it and keep doing what you’re doing and let’s just try to refine it because I think they have potential to be one of the best crews on pit road. It’s just a matter of refining everything they’re doing and just kind of straightening some things out.
“So I’m proud of the effort they made. It was a great weekend for them to have going into the off week to really [say] ‘Hey, let’s use this momentum and continue to work through the off week and go put together some good runs’, so proud of them for keeping their head down and working through together.”
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