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Veteran crew chief Jonathan Hassler called a two-tire stop for Ryan Blaney late in the Dollar Tree 301 to give the Team Penske driver the good track position he needed to secure his second consecutive victory at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Blaney, who led 115 laps in Sunday’s 301-lap event, dropped to 14th due to a pit stop problem on lap 188. He was about to leave his pit box when the left-front lug fell off the wheel. Tire carrier Trevor Apsey grabbed the lug that was lying on the pavement and put it on the wheel for tire changer Keiston France. USA Network reported it as the team’s ninth pit stop miscue this year. “I’d be curious to know what those statistics are from other teams,” Hassler said. “It’s really competitive on pit road. If you’re going to have any speed, you’re going to have these sort of miscues. We’re fortunate that we’re fast enough and up front enough that everybody takes notice when it does happen.” The pit road mistake left 32-year-old Blaney mired just outside the top 10 until Riley Herbst and Connor Zilisch crashed in tun four on lap 225. That brought out the eighth of nine caution flags. Hassler called for a two-tire stop for his driver, and that gave Blaney the lead for good. “It was a good call after our issue on pit road,” Blaney said after the race that took the green flag about 45 minutes late due to rain. “It was a long, long run to the end, longest run we had. Just tried to manage my stuff.” Blaney’s third victory this season and the 20th of his career leaves him 77 points behind Denny Hamlin who locked up the No. 1 seed for the Chase with one race remaining in the regular season. Entering next weekend’s race at Daytona, the top 13 drivers are locked into the post-season Chase. That leaves Wallace, Austin Cindric, Shane van Gisbergen, and Ryan Preece vying for the final three positions in the 16-driver field. With Blaney’s New Hampshire victory, Team Penske has now won four of the last six races with Blaney and Joey Logano winning two each. Even though Blaney led the final 74 laps at the one-mile New Hampshire track, it wasn’t smooth sailing for the Team Penske driver who was being run down by second place Bubba Wallace and third place Josh Berry in the closing laps. Wallace and Berry had received four fresh tires on their final stops to Blaney’s two. With 20 laps remaining, Blaney led Wallace by 1.959 seconds and Berry by 3.389. However, with 10 to go, Wallace had cut the deficit to 0.715 second and Berry was within 1.879-seconds of his fellow Ford driver. Wallace continued gaining on Blaney, coming within 0.412-second of him with five laps remaining. But then with four laps to go, Wallace locked up his 23XI Racing’s Toyota front brake entering a turn and had to settle for second, 0.586-second behind Blaney. “I picked up a big vibration on the left front (after the lockup),” Wallace said. “Made our great day go to crap and salvaging what we had.” Blaney said he knew his competitors who had four fresh tires would eventually pressure him. “Just tried to manage the lap traffic and manage the tire, not make a mistake,” Blaney said after the race that began with the competitors on wet weather tires for the first 40 laps. A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.