Team Penske trio believes crew chief change will do everyone good

Sheryl Crow’s "A Change Would Do You Good" must be Team Penske’s unofficial theme song for the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Earlier this month, Penske announced that the organization was shuffling its crew chiefs around to different drivers for 2020. Brad Keselowski will now have Jeremy Bullins atop the No. 2 pit box instead of Paul Wolfe, Ryan Blaney will now have Todd Gordon as the No. 12 team’s crew chief instead of Bullins and Joey Logano will have Wolfe calling the shots in place of Gordon. This comes after the organization totaled six wins and saw all three drivers finish in the top eight of the standings. "Last year was a good year for us, but it wasn’t great," Keselowski said on Monday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. "Penske has made a number of changes to all the teams because good isn't good enough I think I've heard my boss say. We want to win the championship. We didn't have a car in the final four and that's unacceptable to us." RELATED: Penske shuffles crew chiefs for 2020 | Analysis: Making sense of the moves

The shakeup broke up several long-time pairings: Logano had been with Gordon for seven seasons, Keselowski had been with Wolfe for 10 seasons (nine in Cup, one in Xfinity) and Blaney and Bullins had been linked in some capacity for eight seasons -- including all of Blaney's Cup career thus far.

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Keselowski won the 2012 championship with Wolfe, while Logano won the 2018 championship with Gordon. Despite the changes, the teams themselves stayed together meaning that the engineers and pit crews that worked with a particular crew chief are moving over with that particular pit boss.

Keselowski is the lone driver that has some extensive experience with his new crew chief from racing in the Xfinity Series. The Keselowski-Bullins duo combined for 14 wins in that series and the 2012 champion compared working with Bullins in Xfinity and now in Cup as "the difference between dating and being married." "I feel pretty good about the opportunity to be successful with Jeremy," Keselowski said. "Somebody pushed me on it and said 'he’s the only crew chief in the Penske lineup that doesn’t have a Cup championship.' And the way I look at it quite simply is that means it’s his turn. Hopefully, it’s our turn together." 2019 SEASON RECAPS: Brad Keselowski | Joey Logano | Ryan Blaney

Adding additional intrigue to the changes is the fact that Blaney and Keselowski are both heading into contract years.

"At the end of the day, what's in my best interest is to go out and kick some ass on the race track," Keselowski said. "If you win races and kick some ass on the race track, the rest of that stuff is easy peasy." Blaney closed out 2019 strong en route to his best finish in the season standings – seventh – of his career to date. He noted that while it’s "nice to mix things up every now and then" Penske has work to do to catch Joe Gibbs Racing – which won 19 races in 2019.

"I think we need to get our cars better as a whole group," Blaney said. "JGR was obviously kicking everyone’s butt especially towards the end of the year — second half of the year — they were pretty stout. I think we've got to improve on that to catch up and I thought we found some stuff at the end of the year that can carry over."

Logano, who is set to make his 400th NASCAR Cup Series start at the 2020 Daytona 500 on Feb. 16 (2:30 p.m. ET on FOX) believes the changes will bring fresh ideas into the fold. "It’s huge," Logano said. "I think for a lot of us we noticed that there can be a lot of gains from working with new people. New challenges for us, which I think is going to be healthy. It forces the teams to talk to each other even more than they already do because they are going to be talking that 'my last driver had this and this driver has that.'" The 2018 NASCAR Cup Series champion has already been at work getting to know his new crew with some team-building exercises that include a Habitat for Humanity build in Cabarrus County and an upcoming outing at a go-kart track. "I believe that stuff really means a lot and goes a long way as far as being a team member," Logano said. "I don't think it's about just showing up and driving the car and everyone living their own separate life. I don't feel like that’s what being a team really is." [ndmsvideo vid="6122287665001" iframe="true" play="false"]