Jonathan Hassler: ‘We just focus on trying to be better’

No. 12 Team Penske crew chief Jonathan Hassler talks what went into the success for Ryan Blaney to take a win at Pocono.

Transcript

00:00Here in victory lane at Pocono with Jonathan Hassler winning crew chief today of that number 12 car Jonathan

00:05Such a big win for this team. What does this do for confidence in momentum?

00:09Which is five races left to go in the regular season

00:11Yeah, I think after we got the win in Iowa, you know, we set out really hard to really work on our intermediate program

00:16That's you know an area we've been struggling

00:18So we've certainly been pushing some new new ideas new directions and I think we found a little bit of speed

00:23So much of being successful here though is strategy on pit road

00:27Talk me through your thoughts process on top of the box and what worked for you guys today?

00:30Yeah, we you know, definitely wanted to have track position when it mattered

00:33Certainly, there were some opportunities early in the race where you know

00:36Maybe we could have had track position early

00:38but it was gonna put us in a

00:39Potentially bad spot for late in the race and and certainly we just got a little bit lucky with the way kind of things played

00:44Out and had track position when it mattered the most

00:47Restarts here. We've heard how difficult they are from a lot of drivers even today getting out of the race car

00:51How impressed were you with seeing the way that Ryan was able to navigate those final restarts?

00:55Yeah, Ryan did it did a great job

00:57Certainly, like you said restarts here a little bit crazy. You can get three and four wide at times

01:01So we were able to clear and get the lead off a turn one

01:04Multiple times so certainly proud of that from you know, Ryan standpoint and for the whole organization

01:10Ratiates engines. Everybody's doing a good job of continuing to get better

01:14Well second win of the year. This team is having an incredible amount of strong runs right now

01:18The consistency is definitely there what's working for this 12 team? Yeah, we

01:23Just can continue to try to be better

01:25I think that's our focus week in and week out regardless of whether we're winning or we're you know running, you know 35th

01:30We just focus on trying to be better and make sure that we peak at the right time of the year

01:33Where does Ryan and this team compare at this point in the year now this year to where they were at this point last?

01:38Year when they won the championship. Yeah, we talked about it, you know after Iowa

01:42We felt like we probably had a little bit more speed in general this year

01:46Felt like we needed to work on our intermediate program and I feel like you know, like I said today

01:50It's a good step towards that so I feel like we're certainly in a better position and excited for everything that's to come

01:56Thanks, Jonathan. Congrats on the win today