NASCAR CUP SERIES: CHAMPIONSHIP RACE

November 8, 2026

Jonathan Hassler

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the race-winning crew chief of the No. 12 Ford, Jonathan Hassler.

We'll go right to questions.

Q. Knowing how close he was a couple years ago here, to pass that car again for the race win, how rewarding was it from your perspective?

JONATHAN HASSLER: Yeah, those closing laps, definitely a scenario that after the 2024 race we definitely reviewed a lot, had some idea of how we'd handle it differently. I give him and our spotter, Tim, a lot of credit dealing with those things.

Yeah, it was certainly cool to get a little bit of redemption here at Homestead.

Q. Back-to-back season-ending wins for the 12 team. What does that do for you going into the off-season?

JONATHAN HASSLER: Yeah, it's definitely a good bit of momentum. Personally I came into this week a little just kind of reflecting on the Chase, kind of once we've been knocked out. Definitely disappointed in what we have achieved with what we're capable of. We're definitely capable of so much more.

The only thing we could do is really come in and win this weekend. So proud of everybody. We got a lot of changes coming. Definitely think the 12 will be contending again next year.

Q. How do you build on it when you know the body changes?

JONATHAN HASSLER: Yeah, I think we're, at Team Penske and on the 12 team, very process-oriented. I think, honestly, there's a lot of potential hopefully in the new body. Hopefully we can apply the processes and things that we've developed through the season to continue to be competitive with that.

Q. I know the intermediate tracks have been that sticking point this year. How did it feel to close out the season with a lot more improvement in that realm? Do you kind of expect the new Ford to be better on the intermediate tracks?

JONATHAN HASSLER: We worked all summer on the intermediates. We started 2025 pretty strong on the intermediates, but definitely lost a little bit. The whole company, all the teams, all the guys at the shop worked on what we needed to do to make this package better.

You can definitely see through the Chase we were much more competitive. I think we were top five at all three mile-and-a-half's prior to this in the Chase.

Had a good shot at winning Charlotte if last pit stop goes a little bit differently. So I expected to be competitive coming into this race with the history we have at Homestead. I'm glad we could back that up.

Q. How has Blaney evolved as a driver since you worked with him?

JONATHAN HASSLER: I think everybody in the sport you work with, they're top-level people. They're always trying to be as good as they can be, reflecting on things they can do different. That's the only way to get to this level in this sport. He's no different.

He's continued to improve. He's gotten more calm. He's able to deal with adversity considerably better than he had in the past. When we had our issues today, I don't think he said one thing on the radio. He just did his deal. We had a lot of speed in our car. He was able to make a lot of passes and get us into contention.

Q. From a crew chief standpoint compared to the Playoff format, how mentally taxing has it been?

JONATHAN HASSLER: You can ask my wife. It's been the hardest season probably to date (tearing up). You're racing every single race to try to elevate yourself all 10 weeks of the Chase. The points add up. Darlington was just as important as Homestead. It's been tough.

But this team has fought to the bitter end. We're going to continue to get better and hopefully be up on the bigger stage next year.

Q. Are you preferring this format or the other format?

JONATHAN HASSLER: Man, I'm a racer. I'm going to race whatever format they bring to us.

Q. If you had a choice?

JONATHAN HASSLER: For our team, I like to work hard, I like to dig in, I like to be the one that worked the hardest. So this format, because it asks for that, I'm fine with it.

Q. Going into the Chase, it seemed like the hurdles for the 12 team were going to be the three intermediate tracks. Looking back, you look at Gateway, Martinsville, Bristol, Talladega, four tracks that are really strong for you that you expected to gain a lot of points. When you look back now, do you feel like this one maybe got away from you?

JONATHAN HASSLER: I think it definitely got away from us. For me personally, I think Gateway, there were probably some decisions we could have made differently to not have that DNF. We get out of Gateway without a DNF, with a top-five finish, we were running top five. I think Ryan handles Bristol a little bit differently with Hocevar.

I think we continued to compound our issues. Even Martinsville, it has always been a really good track for us. We were certainly really aggressive with the package we brought. We didn't need a base hit, we needed a win. We brought a pretty different package. We finally had it rolling there before we had our incident.

I think just the issues early in the Chase compounded and kind of made us a little bit more desperate and continued to set us back. Definitely do some things different here in a year.

THE MODERATOR: Jonathan, congratulations on this race win. Have a great off-season.

JONATHAN HASSLER: Thank you.