Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 Ford was fast enough to win at Bristol, but his pit crew made sure it didn’t happen. He had the speed, had fresher tires on the final restart, was right there in contention, and he gave it everything on that last lap. But he came home second, and when he stepped out of the car, he did not point fingers at the track or the competition. He pointed at his own pit road.
“We’ve got to get it better,” Blaney said. “If we’re going to keep competing and get cars that can win races and stuff, we’ve got to clean that up.” Roger Penske was listening.
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The team has swapped jackmen with Wood Brothers Racing, which runs the No. 21 car for Josh Berry under the Team Penske umbrella. Landon Honeycutt, who had been Ryan Blaney’s jackman this season, moves over to Berry’s car. Coming the other way is Patrick Gray, a veteran jackman.
So, a jackman is the person responsible for lifting the car during a pit stop. When they are in sync with the rest of the crew, stops are fast and clean. When they are not, it shows up exactly the way it has for Blaney all season.
According to analyst Bozi Tatarevic, the root of the problem was not necessarily Honeycutt’s ability; it was timing and chemistry. The No. 12 pit crew had been stable since 2022, but a series of changes in quick succession disrupted that.
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A tire changer swap at Darlington last spring, then Honeycutt replacing veteran jackman Jordan Osinski over the winter, left the crew in a position to rebuild chemistry at the worst possible time. “Anytime you swap a pit member, you create instability,” Tatarevic explained. “It takes time to rebuild.”
In NASCAR, a pit stop can be the difference between winning and finishing fifth. Every second a car sits on pit road is a position lost on the track. Through the first eight races of the 2026 season, Blaney’s No. 12 team had lost a net 88 positions on pit road, the worst number of any team in the entire Cup Series, and it was not particularly close. The second-worst team had lost 57. And Bristol was the tipping point.
After winning the pole and leading 190 laps at the April 2026 Bristol race, Blaney’s day was derailed by repeated pit road errors that cost him the lead position multiple times. Despite his frustration over the radio, he managed to stay in contention until a late-race caution with 24 laps to go, where his crew chief opted for four fresh tires. This strategy set up an overtime finish where Ryan Blaney surged from 7th to 2nd, ultimately losing to Ty Gibbs by a mere 0.055 seconds. This naturally forced Penske to make the change merely four days later.
Honeycutt, who had less than a year of Cup Series experience, was put in a high-pressure environment before he was ready for it. Penske now turns to Patrick Gray to steady the ship, and if the name sounds familiar, there is a good reason for that.
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The man who helped win a championship is now tasked with saving the season for Ryan Blaney
In the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Championship race at Phoenix, Blaney’s teammate, Joey Logano, was in the middle of a title fight when his primary jackman, Graham Stoddard, got injured mid-race. With the championship on the line, Team Penske needed someone who could jump into the No. 22 car immediately and not miss a beat.
Patrick Gray, who was pitting Austin Cindric’s No. 2 car that day, got the call. He crossed over, clicked instantly with the No. 22 crew, and Logano went on to win the championship.
That is the kind of experience and composure Penske is now bringing to Ryan Blaney’s car. Gray does not need time to adjust to the Penske ecosystem. He has been inside it for years.
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Whether it is enough to undo eight races of damage in the standings remains to be seen. Blaney is still one of the faster cars in the field and has kept himself in a reasonable position despite the pit road struggles. He’s currently 2nd in the standings, with 324 points to his name. He’s won a race and finished in the top five three times.
But, in a season where the Chase format rewards consistency and punishes big swings, every position lost on pit road is more significant than it used to be. Penske made the call. Now it is Gray’s turn to deliver.
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