The Staff Penske No. 12 pit crew had a extremely aggressive afternoon on Sunday at Martinsville.
Whereas a typically uneventful race sometimes wouldn’t be a newsworthy improvement, it’s proper now as a result of the group that works alongside driver Ryan Blaney has been a work-in-progress this 12 months.
It has objectively been a tough month and a half till this previous weekend the place their mixed group effort resulted in a sixth place end. The pit crew additionally delivered stops that stored them within the combine all afternoon.
Bozi Tatarevic, beneath the Motorsport.com banner, requested Blaney on Saturday if there had been any consideration of swapping out jackman Landon Honeycutt however the driver wasn’t keen to go that far.
“I’m not going to name out Landon,” Blaney mentioned. “I feel there’s been another issues which have contributed to possibly it wanting like he’s struggled a bit bit. He’s inexperienced and he’s a bit new so there are some issues he’s received to scrub up.
“I do suppose from an gear and choreography facet, that may enhance to. Landon remains to be with us this weekend and we’re going to let him continue to grow and studying and hopefully, from a personnel and gear standpoint, we are able to sort of clear that up and discover higher methods to do issues.”
Staff Penske vp of competitors Travis Geisler echoed these sentiments on Monday throughout a SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Look too. Geisler mentioned the No. 12 group, holistically, is doing a great job this season.
“We have at all times continued to tweak issues and attempt to make issues higher,” Geisler mentioned on the air. “And I feel we simply sort of ran right into a spot the place we received bit by one thing a pair instances and wanted to take a step again and take a look at all of the items concerned and attempt to resolve transfer ahead.
“I feel the personnel that we now have concerned there are superior. I imply, that group is lights out after they’re on. I feel there’s some issues we have to do higher from the group facet of issues to make their jobs a bit simpler.
“There’s clearly some issues they should work on too. You recognize, the pit highway dance … there’s only a few groups having excellent days week-in and week-out. It is tremendous tough.”
Geisler mentioned their points have been highlighted greater than different groups’ comparable struggles as a result of they’re working within the top-5 when it occurs. However all instructed, proper now, there is no impending adjustments as a result of it is a crew they’ve developed from scratch.
“The way in which the pit world goes as of late, it’s important to develop your folks,” Geisler mentioned. “With the hiring of crews, it is gotten actually tough in how everybody will get built-in into the tradition, and the way it’s totally different than again within the day when it was only a bunch of highway crew and mechanics going over the wall.
“However like I mentioned, we now have an important group of fellows going over the wall over there, and we have had success with them and they’re very able to getting the job performed.”
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