The No. 12 Team Penske Ford team failed pre-race inspection twice Saturday afternoon at Darlington Raceway.
The team will lose pit-stall selection for Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 (5 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) to open the Cup Series Chase presented by Mobil 1, and car chief Raymond Fox was ejected for the remainder of the weekend.
RELATED: Starting lineup | At-track photos
Driver Ryan Blaney enters The Chase as the No. 2 seed and has earned three wins in 2026 in pursuit of his second championship.
“We just had kind of a normal issue,” No. 12 crew chief Jonathan Hassler told NASCAR.com. “Maybe saw a little bit more of a shift in the underfloor scanning machine than we normally see, but certainly nothing that’s too out of line, and then we had a shift in another sort of area, kind of the second time through. So yeah, just a stack-up of tolerances, and then that kind of bit us a little bit.”
Cup Series practice and qualifying at the South Carolina track were scrapped because of inclement weather. Blaney is scheduled to start 24th in the 38-car field, with a last-lap crash in last weekend’s regular-season finale at Daytona hurting his figure in the performance metrics that set the lineup.
Blaney finished third in the Cup Series’ most recent visit to the 1.366-mile track, marking the best Darlington result of his career in the Goodyear 400.
Contributing: Zack Albert