THE MODERATOR: We will start with our post-race press conference, Team Penske, No. 12 Ford. We are joined by the crew chief of the No. 12, Jonathan Hassler, and Team Penske vice chairman, Walter Czarnecki.
Gentlemen, your feelings right now walking into the Championship 4, battling for a championship next weekend in Phoenix.
JONATHAN HASSLER: Yeah, it's incredibly exciting. The way we did it I think is a huge testament to the team. Seems like we were obviously going to get in on points, but to get the win is super exciting for us.
WALTER CZARNECKI: Yeah, thank you very much.
It's a great testimony to Jonathan, Ryan of course, the way the car was prepared. They knew what they had to do.
I see we've been building on the momentum of the last three or four weeks where our performance really has been good. Prior to even Talladega, we saw positive performance with the car. Winning at Talladega certainly helped coming into these last three races. Good runs at the other two places put us in this position, but to come here and win is unbelievable.
Congratulations to all of them. And that Discount Tire Menards Ford Mustang gets great fuel mileage, too (smiling). That's a positive.
THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.
Q. What have you seen from Ryan as far as his mentality? This is a breakthrough moment for him after getting close. To run well at this time of year, what does that say about him?
JONATHAN HASSLER: I think everything for him, the next big step, if you will, in his career kind of started at Phoenix last year when Joey was able to win. If you look back to that race, we were in a good position to win. We had all the speed that we needed.
Kind of rewind a couple weeks, we had mistakes at Vegas and Homestead that took us out of the Championship 4. He realized that obviously you take those mistakes out, he's a champion. Got to clean up the mistakes.
He went to work in the off-season just trying to make sure that he was as mentally focused and could mentally last through the race. He's done a great job. Leaps and bounds, tons of progress this year.
Q. Jonathan, you said on Thursday instead of spurts of anger, you want Ryan to be a consistent level of fire. Apart from a few instances early in the race, it seemed like he achieved that. What was your level of satisfaction with that progress?
JONATHAN HASSLER: I think he did an incredible job, kind of managing the situation. It's really difficult coming into this race, in our shoes, not a must-win scenario. By points we're kind of able to get ourselves in. The 24 really struggled all day. We were able to put ourselves in a really good points position. He kind of managed that and understood the big picture all day long.
Like I said, he's made tons of progress, and I'm super proud of him.
Q. How close was he actually on fuel? You said at one point he needed to save, 10 laps short. Clearly that didn't happen. How close was he on fuel at the end?
JONATHAN HASSLER: We were in a good position on fuel. I think it was the guys that kind of pitted that cycle before that were short. Maybe that was kind of miscommunicated.
No, we were in a good position. I think we could have ran one green-white-checkered. I was certainly hoping we didn't get a caution. Happy we didn't.
Q. When you look at Blaney's record this year, when the Playoffs started, there were a lot of people that didn't look at Ryan as making it. How did he change or what did you see, the team, Ford's situation, that has brought us to this point?
WALTER CZARNECKI: Yeah, that's a great question. Of course early Ryan had success, winning the 600. He then got into a little bit of a bumpy patch.
Where I personally saw a change in the momentum was at Texas. It was a top-five car, potentially a race-winning car. I think we were running third at the time. We had a self-inflicted speeding penalty that set him back. He rebounded from that, came back.
We saw the performance of the car, the performance of the crew. By the way, the crew was outstanding today. It was perfect.
That was the real turning point for me, was Texas. We knew we had a good race team winning the 600, of course. Since Texas, he has been on an upward trajectory ever since.
JONATHAN HASSLER: I totally agree with Walt. Obviously we came out of the gate this year and we didn't have quite the speed we had last year. We knew we had to go to work. We were able to get the win at the 600. From there, honestly, we could experiment a little bit and try some different things through the year, figure out some things that worked, what didn't.
When the Playoffs come around, you stick to the things that you figured out worked. We've gotten a lot of momentum on the car.
WALTER CZARNECKI: If I may underscore something, our mile-and-a-half program has been struggling for the first half, first two-thirds of the year. Jonathan, Travis, Michael, the whole team there have been working together with the drivers. I think we saw a turnaround beginning at Kansas probably with our performance. Then that carried to Texas where we had that great finish. It's obviously carried to this point.
It's been a complete team effort supporting Ryan to get to this point.
THE MODERATOR: Walt, Jonathan, congratulations and we'll see you in Phoenix.
WALTER CZARNECKI: Thank you all. Appreciate it.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports