On Tuesday, the Wood Brothers announced that Team Penske engineer Jonathan Hassler would take over as crew chief for the No. 21 team beginning with this weekend’s NASCAR All-Star Race at Texas Motor Speedway.
Hassler replaces Greg Erwin, who has served as the organization’s crew chief the past three seasons in the Cup Series. Erwin had served as Paul Menard’s crew chief for two seasons before DiBenedetto joined the team last year.
The change comes as DiBenedetto and the No. 21 is struggling to remain in the hunt for the Cup Series playoffs. With 10 races remaining in the regular season, DiBenedetto is 60 points below the cut-off to make the 16-driver field on points.
DiBenedetto began the year with three finishes of 28th or worse and has been forced to dig out of a points hole ever since.
So far this season, he has two top-five and three top-10 finishes through 16 races. DiBenedetto’s best finish was fourth at Kansas in early May.
Since that race, the team has not finished better than 18th.