Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Martinsville Media Availability
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Jonathan Hassler, crew chief for Ryan Blaney and the No. 12 Menards Ford Mustang Dark Horse at Team Penske, was part of a Q&A session this afternoon with members of the media and talked about this weekend’s Round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway, where the team has won each of the past two years.
JONATHAN HASSLER, Crew Chief, No. 12 Menards Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU WERE IN A SIMILAR POSITION LAST YEAR AND WON THIS RACE, SO WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET GOING INTO THIS WEEKEND? “I think, for us, we have to focus on the fact and approach the race as if we haven’t done it before. We have to go and do it again. We can’t rely on the fact that we’ve been able to do it, we just have to put our best foot forward and make sure that we’re taking the best car we can and that we’re studied up on the strategy and the things that we need to do to be competitive at the end of the race.”
HOW MUCH DO YOU PUSH RYAN THIS WEEKEND AND HOW MUCH DO YOU LEAVE HIM ALONE? “I definitely don’t have to push Ryan. He was as upset as anybody after Talladega when we put ourselves in a really good position to win, but by Monday he was focused on going and trying to win Martinsville again and making sure, like I said, we were as competitive as we could be for this race this weekend.”
AND YOU TRY NOT TO WORRY IN GENERAL? “You definitely can’t worry. You just have to go to work and make sure, like I said before, are as good and competitive as you know how to be.”
WHAT CAN YOU LEARN SATURDAY WITH THE NEW TIRE THAT MIGHT HELP FOR SUNDAY? “I think temperature-wise Saturday and Sunday look relatively similar, so we won’t have a huge curveball hopefully from that aspect and we’ll just have to look at how the track takes rubber throughout each of the two groups and how tire wear looks compared to what we’ve seen in the past and build off of that.”
AT WHAT POINT DOES RYAN KNOW HE HAS WHAT HE NEEDS IN THE CAR TO BE COMPETITIVE? DOES HE FIND THAT OUT ON SATURDAY OR IN THE FIRST STAGE OF THE RACE? “I think on Saturday when we practice he has a really good feel for what he wants out of the car. The hardest thing at Martinsville, I feel like, is being fast and being able to make passes as well and he has an approach that has been able to allow us to pass cars, and I think he’s looking for something specific out of the car in practice and through the weekend to be able to do that.”
WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT HOW CONFIDENT OR PREPARED YOU FEEL ABOUT GOING FOR THREE IN A ROW AT MARTINSVILLE? “I agree entirely with what Ryan says about that. Yes, we won there twice. It’s certainly not easy to do. It doesn’t come on its own. We don’t bring the same setup from the spring. It only comes with a lot of hard work and the only way we’re gonna do it again is to bear down and work hard and have a good car and make sure we’re in the picture at the end of the race.”
TEAM PENSKE HAS WON THE LAST THREE CHAMPIONSHIPS, BUT THIS IS A TOUGH POSITION FOR YOU GUYS TO BE IN. “Yeah, it’s a tough position to be in, but I don’t think you ever really think about it like that. I think you accept the weeks past as situations that have happened, events that have transpired, and then look at the situation that you’re in and try to figure out what you need to do to get through it. We have been able to do it before on the 12 team and we haven’t gone to Martinsville yet locked in, so we just have to go and do what we know how to do and try to win the race.”
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU HEAR YOUR COMPETITION SAY IF YOU GUYS MAKE IT TO PHOENIX, YOU WILL BE THE FAVORITES BECAUSE OF YOUR SUCCESS THERE? “I think it obviously speaks to what we’ve been able to do over the last couple of years and the speed that we’ve had, really, with both drivers, Ryan and Joey, at Phoenix. I certainly don’t think it’s true. Loudon, I think, is kind of what transpired a lot of those comments. I think we showed up as a group as good there as we’ve ever been. Some of that is just the result of the opportunity to go and test at Loudon and learn some different things. Does some of that carry over to Phoenix? Sure, but are we gonna be the fastest car – if we get to Phoenix are we gonna be the fastest car in every run of practice and qualifying and lead the whole race? Absolutely not. I think those guys, the Gibbs camp, they were definitely stronger at Phoenix this spring than they’ve ever been and will be super competitive here in a couple of weeks.”
HOW MUCH STOCK CAN YOU PUT IN THAT LOUDON TEST WITH THE TWO RUNS THE 22 GOT ON THAT TIRE? DO YOU GO IN A DIRECTION AND HOPE FOR THE BEST? “Yeah, I think that one specific instance with this tire change that we have and the fact that those guys had the ability to make a couple runs on it you can sort of infer a little bit of what you think the tire might do at Martinsville based on what it did at Loudon, but there are a lot of other factors that will be different as well. It’s one more data point to add to the whole matrix of decisionmaking, but it’s not the only piece of information that we rely on and the tire very well could respond a little bit differently and most likely will this weekend at Martinsville, so it’s nice to have that little bit of information, but it’s certainly not the whole picture and we’ll have to go and practice on this tire and even run part of the race before we really understand how it’s different.”
WITH THIS TIRE AND UNDERSTANDING YOU HAVE TO SEE HOW THINGS GO, HOW MUCH MORE DIFFICULT MIGHT IT BE TO STAY OUT LONGER THAN OTHERS AND NOT HAVE TO COME IN FOR TIRES, OR DO YOU NOT SEE IT BEING THAT DRAMATIC? “I think you hit the nail on the head with what they’re trying to get out of the tire, a softer tire, trying to get some more wear. I think at a track like Martinsville, where track position is everything, I think the lap maybe that you want to come and pit for four tires might be a little bit earlier, but I don’t foresee the situation where you go and run 10 or 15 laps and you want to come down and put four tires on it. I don’t think it will be a drastic change, but it will certainly change how far you’ll want to take the left side tires.”
AS THE TIRES GET SOFTER, HOW MUCH DOES THAT TAKE THINGS OUT OF A CREW CHIEF’S HANDS, OR DOES IT FORCE YOU TO THINK IN A DIFFERENT WAY TO CREATE STRATEGY AND TRACK POSITION? “I think you really just have to adapt to the tire. You put a hard tire on, then you’re setting yourself up to run a lot of the race on the same left side strategy-wise, setup-wise there are changes you make when that’s what you want to do, so opposite with the softer tire. We’ll maybe adjust the car a little bit as we load up this week for expecting it to behave a little bit differently and adjust our strategy slightly based on that as well.”
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU’RE READY THIS YEAR OR RECENTLY THAT IS STUCK IN YOUR MIND FOR A PARTICULAR REASON? “I’ve been reading a lot of data analytics in sports books. I started with Joe Maddon, a book by him on how he adapted to the analytics movement in baseball. I read a couple of other books on the same subject and found that really fascinating. Obviously, our whole world continues to be taken over by data and AI and those kinds of things, and then somebody just recently gave me a copy of the Jackie Stewart autobiography and I think I’ll start that this winter.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE DATA ANALYTIC BOOKS YOU LIKE? I WOULD THINK YOU’D LIKE TO GET AWAY FROM THAT WITH WHAT YOU DO AS A CREW CHIEF. “I think a lot of people, sports are fairly simple, but yet data and analytics have changed the way teams play sports, and I think racing is a lot more scientific, so I think it’s sort of inherent that data is a part of our lives, but I still think there’s a lot of room for us to continue to accept it and utilize it more. Like I said, data has the ability to change the sport that people have played for hundreds of years a certain way. It certainly has the ability to continue to change motorsports, so I definitely look at it just kind of open-minded and certainly trying to find places to be better professionally.”
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER YOU DID RIGHT DURING LAST YEAR’S RACE WHEN YOU WENT IN 38 POINTS BELOW THE CUT LINE? “I think the big things that stand out, honestly, for the last two years in this race, we had an opportunity to put tires on with a long run to end the race and that sort of played out to our advantage. Obviously, we survived to that point. That’s a big part of it. I think it may be even tougher this year. I feel like we have even more of a bullseye on our back than we’ve had in the past, so you just need to survive and I think in this particular race, more times than not, having good long run speed will pay off.”
HOW DO YOU NOT LEAN BACK ON WHAT YOU DID IN YEAR’S PAST? HOW DOES THE BALANCE WORK OUT? “I think inherently that’s just what we do. You’re trying to always take what you did in the past, understand if you had the opportunity to do it again what you would do differently, but mix that in as you have changes and bring in different tires, as weather is different, how do you adapt what you’ve done – the conditions that you know are gonna be different. I think at this point in the job it just kind of comes naturally.”
I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU FIND TIME TO READ BOOKS. “Lots of long plane rides.”
IT SEEMS YOU GUYS ARE ALWAYS GOOD ON THE LONG RUN. IS BLANEY AN EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD DRIVER AT LONG RUN SPEED AND YOU BUILD THE SETUPS TO ADAPT TO HIS STRENGTHS, OR IS THAT SOMETHING YOU LIKE TO HAVE OUT OF YOUR CARS AND IT’S NATURALLY BUILT IN? “I think Ryan and I have obviously had a few years together now. I think a lot of times you’re just trying to find any advantage that you can have, and I think over the last couple of years that’s something that has come to us – the area that we’ve been able to make consistent performance is on the long run. I think it’s a combination of my philosophies with how he drives the car. I think I’ll be frank and tell you that there are a lot of tracks that we wish we could flip that switch and have a little bit more short run speed, and, honestly, that’s been a project of ours over the year is how do we get a little bit more front side speed. I think it’s something that we’re trying to figure
