Phoenix NASCAR Cup Series polesitter Ryan Blaney admits he needs to “clean some stuff up” to match his Penske team-mates’ early season success.
Penske has won the last two Cup rounds with Brad Keselowski at Atlanta and then Joey Logano at Las Vegas.
But Blaney was involved in a crash at the Daytona 500, then finished 22nd in the next two races.
He had led at Atlanta then ran over his car jack during a final stage pitstop, and had a valve stem knocked off the left rear wheel early in the race at Las Vegas.
“We just have to clean some stuff up. It’s been unfortunate,” Blaney said.
“It’s nice to have Penske winning and obviously I’m selfish and I want to win.
“But it’s good to have our cars really fast and my finishes definitely don’t reflect how I’ve been running.
“I’ve been really fast this year at all three places so far.
“I didn’t even really get to race at Vegas. We had that tyre problem at that first stop and tried to play catch-up all day.
“At Atlanta we led a bunch of laps and then had that deal on pit road.
“We’re just trying to clean up some stuff and maybe get a little bit of luck on our side.”
Blaney dominated Friday at Phoenix, leading the practice session and then taking his team’s first pole of the season.
He was second in both Saturday practice sessions, behind Chris Buescher in the morning and Logano later on.
“It’s nice to have the whole team really fast right now. I feel like Penske is the best group right now for sure,” Blaney added.
“We’re still working every day to try and get better and better.
“The speed is there, it’s just a matter of stop running into issues and I think we’ll be pretty good.
“The best thing we can do is control the things we can control and if we keep bringing fast cars to the racetrack, hopefully it will work out one of these times.
“I want to be part of the win club here in the Penske group.”
Blaney goes into Sunday’s race 15th in the Cup standings. His team-mates Keselowski and Logano qualified fifth and 12th.