32nd out of 37. 88 pit road spots lost. A former tire changer saying they have zero confidence. And a crew chief who thought they did a great job.
Bristol Motor Speedway · Food City 500 · April 2026 By PitByNumbers Staff 10 min read I think they did a great job. — Jonathan Hassler, Crew Chief, No. 12 Team Penske Ford That is Jonathan Hassler — crew chief of the No.
12 Team Penske Ford — after his pit crew ranked 32nd out of 37 teams at Bristol on Sunday. After losing 11 positions on pit road in a single race. After Ryan Blaney led 190 laps, had the fastest car on the track for most of the afternoon, and lost by 0.055 seconds to Ty Gibbs — a driver who hadn't won a Cup race in 130 previous tries — on tires that were 25 laps old.
32nd out of 37. Great job. At this point Ryan Blaney might be the most robbed man in professional sports.
He won the 2023 Cup Series championship. He led more laps than anyone in NASCAR last season. He came into 2026 and won at Phoenix in March.
He qualified on the pole at Bristol, dominated the race alongside Kyle Larson, and watched Gibbs steal it on a strategy gamble that only worked because the No. 12 pit crew keeps giving everyone a head start every Sunday. And his crew chief's post-race assessment was "I think they did a great job." This is fine.
Everything is fine. KEY TAKEAWAYS • The Three-Car Team That's Running Three Different Seasons Roger Penske fields three Cup cars. They share the same Ford manufacturer support, the same technical resources, the same infrastructure.
Same Ford support. Same Penske infrastructure. Three completely different seasons.
And the one guy who is genuinely carrying the organization is the one getting hurt the most by the shared pit road system that's supposed to help all three of them. What 88 Spots Means in a Title Fight In NASCAR, a pit stop is the moment a team either gains or gives back the ground they earned on the race track. Your driver spends 30 laps building a 3-second gap on the car behind him.
His crew takes 3 seconds longer than that car's crew to change four tires. You come out behind. Now your driver has to pass that car back — at a track where passing is hard, on tires he's burning up to make the move, against a car that now has track position and clean air.
Blaney's crew has done this to him 88 times through 8 races. 30 more times than any other driver. His average four-tire stop of 12.89 seconds is the worst in the Cup Series.
Bell's crew, the fastest in the field, averages 10.18 seconds — nearly 3 full seconds faster per stop. Gap: 2.71 seconds per stop · Through 8 races, 2026 "The 12 team has been consistently not consistent on pit road with errors and slow pit stops. They don't have the speed, let alone the consistency that you're really seeing out of the Gibbs crews, the Hendrick crews." — Kevin Harvick, Happy Hour Podcast "They have zero confidence.
They're going to have zero confidence." — Former No. 12 Tire Changer "The thing we can do on pit road is we can beat him off pit road, so we're going to focus on that." — Cliff Daniels, Crew Chief, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports A rival crew chief publicly identified Blaney's pit road as a free points dispenser and started using it every week.
That was weeks ago. Nothing has changed. Bristol Was the Whole Season in 505 Laps Blaney started on the pole at Bristol.
He and Larson traded the lead nine times and combined to lead 474 of 505 laps. For 94 percent of the race, the two best cars in the field ran away from everyone else. With 23 laps to go, Chase Elliott spun on his own and brought out a caution.
Blaney and Larson pitted for fresh tires. Gibbs gambled and stayed out, inheriting the lead on tires that were old enough to have their own memories. It's the kind of call that works when the car behind you has to dig through traffic first — which Blaney did, because his crew lost track position on pit road, which meant he restarted outside the top five and had to fight back through the field burning through his new tires along the way.
He got back to Gibbs. Pushed him for everything the car had on the final lap. Lost by 0.055 seconds at the line — the closest Bristol finish since 1991.
After losing 5 spots from the best pit stall on pit road — the stall designed to give you the cleanest exit — Blaney got on the radio: "Clean it up, guys. We cannot lose five spots every time we come down pit road. C'mon." His crew told him there were 244 laps to go.
He said: "Yeah, 10-4, but you understand what I'm getting at here. Lose five spots with the best pit stall." That is a 2023 Cup champion personally coaching his pit crew from inside a race car mid-race. Not after the race.
Not in a debrief. During the race, from the cockpit, because the situation required it. And before you say maybe he could have just wrecked Gibbs — Kyle Busch did exactly that to Riley Herbst four laps earlier and everyone called it short-track racing.
Blaney chose not to. Lost by 0.055 seconds. Shook Gibbs' hand after and meant it.
He is too good for this situation. That is the whole story. Why Running Out the Clock Isn't a Strategy Anymore In previous seasons, a rough start on pit road wasn't fatal.
Fall behind early, bank playoff points, survive to the postseason, reset. The format gave teams room to absorb early losses. That's gone.
The 2026 points system is a straight fight from Daytona to Homestead. No automatic playoff berths. No reset.
Blaney is already 62 points behind Tyler Reddick — a gap built almost entirely on pit road, not on the race track. He is leading the field in passing and speed metrics. He won at Phoenix.
He dominated Bristol. He is doing everything a championship driver is supposed to do. He just needs the 20 people behind the wall to do their jobs.
Team Penske's competition director Travis Geisler acknowledged it publicly after Martinsville: the program "isn't where they'd like it yet." Jonathan Hassler, after Bristol, thought they did a great job. Cliff Daniels is building his weekly race strategy around their weakness and cashing in every Sunday. Roger Penske has won the Indianapolis 500 twenty times.
He has built one of the most dominant motorsports operations in American history. He does not typically watch problems go unfixed. So at some point you have to ask: what exactly is he waiting for? Because Ryan Blaney is out there every Sunday driving his ass off, overcoming his own pit crew, winning races anyway, and still bleeding the championship one 12.89-second stop at a time.
That is not sustainable. And Roger Penske, of all people, knows it.