NASCAR CUP SERIES: MOBIL 1 301

September 21, 2025

Jonathan Hassler

Michael Nelson

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We're going to get started with our post-race press conference. We are joined by Michael Nelson, president of NASCAR operations at Team Penske, and our race-winning crew chief, Jonathan Hassler. Congratulations.

We'll go ahead and open it up for questions.

Q. Jonathan, if you can, this is obviously a huge win for Penske. Just talk about the performance today. I know Joe Gibbs Racing has had a lot of dominance here at this track, but this has to be a huge win for you guys.

JONATHAN HASSLER: Yeah, it's a great win for us. Really just the way our teams, every one of them, kind of performed all weekend. We had really good speed off the truck. We all qualified well, and we were able to run up front all day.

Huge testament to all the effort, all the people back at the shop and each one of the teams puts into making our program better week in and week out.

Q. If you guys come in here, obviously Joey has had some success, but as far as your team cars, he's the only one that's really stood out here in the past. For you guys, how much of a team effort was it to really get all the cars to the point you said they were, and how much did you guys lean on each other this week?

JONATHAN HASSLER: We were fortunate that Joey was able to come here and test. I give Joey and Paul a lot of credit for getting through a lot of things at the test that made our cars faster. We all worked together to kind of go through the things that were tested and the different philosophies that have and haven't worked throughout the year and make sure that we were all as competitive as we could be when we showed up.

Q. Michael, in terms of Blaney locking in this first round here, what does that mean for the organization and getting the other drivers to move on?

MICHAEL NELSON: I said earlier my stress has been reduced by one-third (laughter). We've got two more to try to get in here these next couple weeks.

No, this goes a long way. It's really good to see this team get the win. They've had the fastest car quite a bit here recently. It's good to bring it home for them just for the win's sake, but also it's huge to obviously have a little bit of breathing room for the next round.