October 26, 2019 | By Lee Spencer

Team Penske realigns pit crews prior to the Round of 8

MARTINSVILLE, Va.—With Joey Logano attempting to defend his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup title and Ryan Blaney advancing to the penultimate round for just the second time in his career, Team Penske tweaked its pit crews in hopes of offering the Nos. 12 and 22 teams the best shot to transfer to the Championship 4.

After Brad Keselowski was knocked out of the Playoffs following last weekend’s race at Kansas Speedway, the organization elected to move the No. 2 pit crew to Blaney's No. 12 car.

“We’re always constantly evaluating who has the hot hand at the moment, what groups are going to be the best where,” Penske’s NASCAR Competition Director Travis Geisler said. “When the 2 car didn’t advance, to this round, we all kind of had to look at things and decide what was there that could potentially help some of the other groups.”

Blaney is currently eighth in the point standings, 21 points behind fourth-place Logano. Logano trails points leader Kyle Busch by 16, and his pit crew got a boost, too.

Logano has been reunited with his former jackman Graham Stoddard, who moved this season to the No. 12 team with Ryan Blaney. The No. 12 team’s tire carrier, Wade Moore, has also been transferred to the No. 22 Ford for the remainder of the year. The No. 22 team’s former jackman, Nathan Ricketts, and tire carrier, Dylan Dowell, moved with the remaining members of the No. 12 team to Keselowski’s squad.

Logano isn’t concerned with the change this late in the season. Now, he feels the No. 22 team has put the band back together.

“We had a rookie jackman  this year who has made a lot of good gains over this season, but I feel the opportunity to put basically the same team together that won the championship last year for the next few races I think was a smart play,” Logano said.

“We definitely needed some speed from the pit crew side of things and putting the band back together from where it was last year when we won the championship makes sense, so I was on board with that.”

The decision to enhance the No. 22 pit crew prior to Martinsville Speedway in 2018 paid off with a win for Logano in the First Data 500—along with a ticket to the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“Last year, we had moved a jackman from the 12 over to the 22 and we decided to do that again and kind of move that group along,” Geisler added. “That leads to a little turmoil there with the 12, so we moved the carrier over from the 12 so those two can continue to work together. There’s a lot of choreography between those two positions and how they hand off the tires and stuff, so we thought that was best.

“At that point, you’re kind of left with putting together a group on the 12 that’s the best you can. Fortunately, the guys on that team that are left are great guys but you’re not going to have that chemistry instantly, so you take the 2 car as a unit and put them on the 12. That’s about the best combination we could come up with.”