How Team Penske No. 22 crew faced adversity, shuffled up for Logano's latest title

AVONDALE, Ariz. — Paul Wolfe said he didn’t initially know there was an issue. His No. 22 Team Penske crew had completed a green-flag pit stop some 20 laps earlier, near the midpoint of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series championship race, keeping Joey Logano in contention for his third title.

Wolfe, the No. 22 group’s veteran crew chief, was locked in. The race broadcast feed on the pit-box screens told him there was a problem, one that would alter the lineup for his five over-the-wall personnel.

“I actually saw it on one of the TVs, my monitors in front of me,” Wolfe said post-race, “like, ‘what just happened to Graham?\"”

Jack man Graham Stoddard was suddenly sidelined, leaving the pit stall to the attention of the track’s medical staff and forcing Team Penske’s pit crew department to make a change on the fly. Pressed into duty with a championship on the line was Patrick Gray, moved over from the No. 2 Ford team for Austin Cindric.

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His response was calm and collected, deflecting the high pressure that might go with being thrust into the winner-take-all finale.

“It’s not a matter of like, ‘Oh, man, now we’ve got to do this.’ It’s kind of like, ‘OK, what do I need to do? What I need to bring down?\"” Gray told NASCAR.com, soaked from the champagne spray after popping corks near the champion’s stage. “It’s just a business thing, right? Let’s just say, ‘Hey, what do I need to do to help this team win the championship?’ And that was the best part was, I just had to do cruise control and let the guys around me do what they needed to do.”

The No. 22 crew reformed midstream with relative aplomb, finishing off a stalwart performance and letting Logano do the rest in Sunday’s season finale at Phoenix Raceway, holding off teammate Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 down the stretch. The 34-year-old driver hoisted the Cup Series trophy for the third time, and his reshaped pit crew — four yellow Shell Pennzoil uniforms with one stray black-and-white Discount Tire fire suit — celebrated as one.

The organization had been in a similar situation before, subbing in the No. 2 team’s Keiston France at front-tire changer when the No. 22’s Joe Dilly was sidelined by a knee injury at Las Vegas. Sunday, with even higher stakes, the crew was near-seamless when it mattered most.

“For Pat to step in and be able to just not miss a beat, that’s a testament to Penske and the culture and the teams that we’ve built,” said Jake Seminara, the No. 22 team’s rear-tire changer. “We practice with this 2 car every day, and they challenge us. They push us to be better. We didn’t miss a beat. We actually did the fastest pit stop that we did all day on the last pit stop. So a testament to Ray Gallahan and Danny Kincaid, our pit coaches. We built a great culture at Penske, so anyone could swap around, be on any team, and we feel like we’re confident that we can go out there and succeed.”

The Team Penske No. 22 crew faced snags early on during pit stops at the Stage 1 intermission. Dilly, the youngest of the group, had trouble switching over his pit gun on the right-front, and Logano dropped from the lead, losing four spots in the exchange.

“Shake it off,” Logano said with reassurance over his team communications. “It’s early.”

The next potential hitch came when the No. 22 team was forced to shuffle up its roster. Seminara said that Stoddard had complained of dizziness before leaving his post, and a Team Penske spokesperson said he had been transported to a local medical facility with an undisclosed ailment.

In stepped Gray, who was with the No. 2 Team Penske group when Brad Keselowski last competed for a championship at Phoenix in 2020.

“I’ve been wanting this opportunity again for a long time, four years,” Gray said. “It’s a little bit bittersweet, right? It’s going to be great to celebrate with these guys, but this is also Graham Stoddard’s team. He was with them all year. I hope he’s doing great, but, you know, we’re brothers. We’re in the same position. We practice with each other. So like I said, it’s bittersweet where I’m ecstatic to win a championship, help these guys win a championship. But this is just as much Graham’s championship, if not more.”

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Like Logano, Wolfe celebrated his third Cup Series crown, including his second in three seasons for Roger Penske’s No. 22 Ford. Wolfe’s painstaking attention to detail has been a key part of Logano’s recent tear, but Sunday’s team decision with its pit-crew personnel gave the veteran crew chief one less concern.

“I think that just shows, obviously, how well we work together as a company and how there’s always one common goal, right, and this weekend it was about making sure the 22 and the 12 had the best chance they could at racing for this championship,” Wolfe said. “I don’t think it was a hard decision for anyone to be able to grab Pat and come on over, and it was really seamless. We had solid stops for a guy just jumping in that didn’t practice all week. He did a great job, and it’s nice to know that we have that ability in these moments to be able to step up and not really affect our race at all.”

Seminara remarked about the achievement of Logano’s three Cup Series championships and how it brings him to a rare level in stock-car racing history. He joins Lee Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip and Tony Stewart — Hall of Famers all — as legendary drivers who can claim that trifecta.

The night brought Seminara to the same status as a three-time champ among the over-the-wall crowd. He said he’s been hired, fired and swilled champagne through the years, calling Sunday night’s capstone celebration “the experience of a lifetime.”

Gray’s mismatched uniform stood out like a bit of an odd duck in the championship party as the crew joined Logano in donning goggles for the drinking and flinging of the bubbly.

The dissimilar fire suit ultimately didn’t matter. Resilience and winning did.

“You never know what’s going to happen until that checkered flag falls,” Seminara said. “We didn’t have the greatest night to start off. We had some issues on pit road, and our car was fast, and Joey said, ‘Hey, shake it off. Let’s do this,’ and we stuck with it, and Pat stepped right in and we were able to knock off some really fast pit stops at the end there. I think we did our fastest pit stop of the night on that last pit stop, so you never know what’s going to happen in these races.

“The best car doesn’t always win. I think we had the best car tonight, but we just had to put ourselves in position to do that with Paul and the strategy and Coleman (Pressley) spotting this thing. I wouldn’t take anybody in this sport other than Joey Logano driving it.”