Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Cheez-It 355 at The Glen – Watkins Glen International
Sunday, August 9, 2015
LOGANO AND FORD COMPLETE WATKINS GLEN WEEKEND SWEEP
• Joey Logano’s win today is his second NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory of the season and 10th of his career.
• This marks the first NXS/NSCS weekend sweep for Ford since the opening weekend of the season when Ryan Reed (NXS) and Joey Logano (NSCS) did it at Daytona.
• It’s also the first time one Ford driver has swept both events on the same weekend since Brad Keselowski did it last year at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (July 12-13).
• The win is Fusion’s 67th NSCS triumph since becoming Ford’s flagship vehicle in 2006.
• Ford now has 635 all-time NSCS victories.
• Team Penske has now registered 43 NSCS wins with Ford, including 16 over the past three years.
Ford Finishing Results:
1st – Joey Logano
7th – Brad Keselowski
9th – Sam Hornish Jr.
14th – Greg Biffle
16th – Aric Almirola
20th – Michael McDowell
21st – Cole Whitt
22nd – Trevor Bayne
33rd – David Gilliland
34th – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
37th – Chris Buescher
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – VICTORY LANE INTERVIEW – TALK US THROUGH THAT LAST LAP? “I’m still just trying to catch my breath. I was really excited after that one. I was running down Harvick there for a little bit and once I got close to him he started to pick up his pace a little bit, which was good because I needed him to run out of gas. I started to catch him a little bit and I drove into one too hard and started to wheel hop. I just about lost it and at that point you just hope he runs out of gas, which he did in the last corner. It makes up for last week. We lost the race last week the same way, so it makes up for it to get it this week.”
WHEN DID YOU REALIZE HE WAS RUNNING OUT OF GAS AND TELL US ABOUT THE PASS? “I thought he was running out of gas out of the carousel there. You could tell his car was slowing down a little bit and then it really slowed down. I was like, ‘Alright, I’ve got something here. Don’t screw this up.’ I was able to get by him into 11 and then he gave me a good shot in the center of 11 and then we were able to get back off the corner. It’s pretty cool to get a road course win. It means so much to me and sweeping the weekend, I’ve never swept a weekend before so this is a really, really special weekend.”
WHAT ABOUT THE STRATEGY ON LAP 47? “There really wasn’t any discussion. I just do what he tells me to do. That’s why he gets paid the big bucks. That’s why I drive the car. We know our roles and that’s what I talk about all the time is I don’t try to crew chief this thing because I know I’ve got someone smarter than me on the box. I just drive the race car and do what he tells me to do. He gives me the piece I need to do my job and everyone does a great job on pit road. Pit road was awesome today. We gained spots every time we came down pit road and I couldn’t be more proud of this team.”
IS THIS THE FIRST TIME YOU’VE HAD A LAST CORNER PASS FOR A WIN IN SPRINT CUP? “Yeah. That would be the first, but hopefully not the last.”
SAM HORNISH JR. – No. 9 Medallion Bank Ford Fusion – “It was pretty good. Our car was good. Bono had a good strategy. A couple of yellows fell the wrong way to make it work the way we needed, but the car was good. We were good in areas that some other cars weren’t and that helped us pass people when we could get to them, but a lot of times we had issues trying to get the pass done because we just weren’t fast enough up through the esses. We’ll work on the car so next time we’ll be a little passing going into the bus stop.” WHAT DOES THIS RESULT MEAN? “It’s great for all the guys. I want more than that when we come to these races. I felt like our car was definitely better than where we finished there, but you take what you can get on the days you have it and I’m just proud of everybody that works on this Medallion Bank Ford Fusion and the guys at RPM. A ninth is probably disappointing for them compared to what they’ve had the last few times coming up here, but the package is a little bit different. I wish we could have had a little more practice time, but anytime you come home in the top-10 you can’t be too disappointed about it.”
COLE WHITT – No. 35 Tweaker Energy Shots Ford Fusion — “We were really solid. We got up there on track position a few times and held our spot and didn’t just get mowed over so that was good. I had decent speed all day. We were faster than some of the cars that beat us, but I’m still really happy with that. We want top-25s and we got that and a little bit more, so it was a good day for us. I’m happy with it.”
DAVID GILLILAND – No. 38 Love’s Travel Stops Ford Fusion — “All weekend we had transmission issues. This was a fresh transmission and from lap one it was a problem. It’s just too bad. Our hands were tied the whole race, so I’m disappointed for our day and all the Love’s folks. Unfortunately, that’s all we could do.”
JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE
TODD GORDON, Crew Chief – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – DID YOU EXPECT TO BE HERE AFTER YESTERDAY’S WIN? “I thought we had a shot at it, but I don’t know that I expected it. We’ve continued to evolve this program and road course racing in general. I think we put a concerted effort into Sonoma this year and saw the rewards of it and we dug pretty hard at making sure we had long run speed and it showed off today. I think we had enough speed to push the 4 into getting out of their fuel strategy.”
WALT CZARNECKI, Vice Chairman, Team Penske – THIS IS THE FIRST WIN FOR TEAM PENSKE AT WATKINS GLEN. “It means an awful lot to Team Penske. As you heard, this is Team Penske’s first Cup win at The Glen. I believe this is our winningest track in the whole history of our company, going back to the Trans-Am and the Can-Am and Nationwide and XFINITY Series – a great run yesterday – so this is particularly meaningful for us to win here today in this race. From a personal perspective, I also want to send my personal condolences because I had a close relationship with Michael Argetsinger. His father, Cameron, I met back in the Trans-Am days, who built this race track and made it what it is. Michael and I developed a friendship over the last 20 years and, as some of you know, Michael passed away here about a month ago, so it means a great deal for me personally that we were able to win this race here at The Glen. So for Joey to do it, it’s Team Penske. Joey has done a great job, but Todd and the whole Shell/Pennzoil crew, I knew from the beginning I just felt comfortable and confident all day long that we had a real opportunity to win here today.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – HOW DOES THIS HELP AS FAR AS MOMENTUM? “It definitely felt like we executed well at Daytona to get that first win and I thought as an organization we’ve executed well. We had a little speed to find in our race cars through the first third of the season and through probably the last six weeks I feel like we’ve found some more speed. We figured out where we were lacking a little and we’ve had more speed, but we’ve had a lot of bridesmaid dresses here the last month with both Joey and Brad finishing second at several places. It’s good to get back to victory lane and build the momentum going forward into the Chase because we’ve only got a few races left.”
WHERE DOES TODAY’S WIN COMPARE TO OTHERS? “This one is pretty special for The Glen wins this is the top of it. Obviously, in ’11 it was pretty big for me to win back home. That was the first win here in the Nationwide Series then, but to come here and to execute on the Cup level is awesome because it’s back home. This is New York State and this is two-and-a-half hours from where I grew up. I came and watched races here before I moved south to go racing, and I love road course racing, not just because of here, but I think it’s a different venue for us, it’s a different mindset to what you’ve got to do with a race car and it brings out good execution and great race car drivers and I think we had that today.”
DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST TIME HERE? “Yeah, I do. I don’t remember the year, but it was a then-Busch Series race. We came up here in the early nineties and it was just awesome just to be a part of the venue and spend a little bit of time down here. My grandparents had a place up on Keuka Lake, so not too far from here, and the area is just fabulous. It’s a great racing venue and I’m pretty proud of what the race track has been able to do with the grandstands and everybody here. It’s been a great venue.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – IF THIS WAS A CHASE RACE HOW DIFFERENTLY WOULD STRATEGY HAVE BEEN AND DO YOU HAVE ANY CLUE WHAT YOUR FUEL MILEAGE WILL BE NEXT WEEK WITH THE NEW RULES PACKAGE? “That’s a really good question. I think we’ll have to see how that comes out next week at Michigan with the high drag package. I think it will be interesting to see how that works out at Michigan. I know we ran it at Indy, but Indy is more of a one-groove race track. See what happens and how the groove moves around next week. It’s a wild card, but that’s cool because it allows the race teams to kind of react to it and it gives you an opportunity. Whenever there’s a change there’s an opportunity to have more success and to beat people in the transition to change, so I’m looking forward to see what we do next weekend there. As to Watkins Glen being a Chase race, the fuel mileage strategy would be more stressful. I think you’d see a few guys, depending on what segment it’s in and where it is, I think you’d see a little more conservativeness, but it may not be a ton of it. If it fell in the first segment, I think you’d see a lot of risk on especially from guys that have nothing to lose. The back half of the Chase grid would definitely be risk on to try to find that win and get themselves through, so we’ll see where it all falls out if it ever happens.”
DID YOU CONSIDER A GREEN-WHITE-CHECKER SCENARIO WITH YOUR FUEL STRATEGY? “We’re in different positions and that’s something Adam and I, I mean Adam was Joey’s engineer back when, so there’s a good relationship there. Adam and I talked this week about last week. I told him, ‘Why did you run me out of gas?’ If he didn’t push so hard, the two of us could have finished one-two, but last week I think was a hit to them and their need is they’ve got multiple wins. They’ve been on fire and they need to be in the top-30, so when you talk about risk on of winning races and how you run your fuel strategy, theirs was to finish the race and they ended up finishing second today. I haven’t looked at the sheet, but I would assume that put them locked in the top-30 at this point. Everybody has their own goals, so theirs is we execute, we put ourselves in the top-30 and we’re in the Chase. I think he did that correctly. I knew that they were in that boat, so we’re in a different boat and we could push the piece. I never told Joey to save fuel because if we save fuel, then the 4, the 20 and the 42 ahead of us could be more aggressive on saving fuel and if they did, the 4 would have made it. We were full-on. I listened to Rodney. Rodney was telling him when the 22 got to him he had to push, so we had to get there as quick as we could to make them use up all they could. Fortunately, they were a third-of-a-lap short.”
WHAT IF HE WOULD HAVE BEEN IN YOUR BOAT? “I think it would have been an interesting race if the 18 is guaranteed in. If they were in the top-10 in points I think it would have been an interesting race. We had strengths and weaknesses today and I think people had different ones, but it would be a great race and that’s how situations fall out, but as it was I think there’s a lot of strategy tied up and a lot of suspense. I was scratching my head wondering how the 4 car got that far, to be honest with you. The made it, almost, and finished third today, but we did what we had to execution-wise to get back to them and to push them and make sure they couldn’t save as much fuel as they needed to.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “It’s remarkable. I’ve never swept a weekend before. I’ve come close a couple times, but never have actually done it. I didn’t really think a road course would be the time that we would be able to sweep the weekend, but what a special race car I had yesterday – such a fast race car and we were able to drive up through the field and have a really good car. Today, Todd made some great adjustments overnight after we talked about the XFINITY race and got my Shell/Pennzoil Ford even better, which I thought was great. We kind of worked our way up through the field slowly and methodically throughout the race and then we kind of kept recycling as the pit sequence kept changing. Eventually, we found ourselves as the lead car on that pit sequence, so Todd did a great job calling this race obviously. That makes up a lot for last week, not that he called a bad race last week. I’m not saying that, Todd. I love you. I’m saying it’s nice that it played out this time. Sometimes it doesn’t work out the way you want it to and that’s why we don’t really talk about it much during the race. He does his thing and I do my thing and we have 100 percent faith in each other no matter what the decision is, whether I do what I do on the race track or what he does on pit road. Our team just executed perfectly today. We may not have had the fastest race car. We had a very good race car that was capable of running in the top-3, I felt like, but the execution of the day is what won us this race and I feel like that’s the strong suit of this 22 team right now.”
ON THE RESTART HALFWAY THROUGH IT LOOKED LIKE YOU GOT A HARD HIT FROM MCMURRAY ANY CONCERN? “To be honest, I didn’t really look at the back of the car after the race, but I don’t even know how it happened or what happened in front of me. I know the 6 checked up. I think the car in front of him checked up. I was right on the 6, so I didn’t have much further to go before I hit him, which saved my nose and then I got wailed in the back and it’s just hard. You can’t see nothing. You’re going uphill, all you can see is spoiler, so you’re driving blind – every driver is – and things happen that quick. It’s bam-boom-done. It happens that quick. It’s tough, but it didn’t really affect my car any. Our car drove fine afterwards, obviously, and was able to keep driving through the field and working our plan.
HOW MUCH DO YOU TALK WITH TODD ON FUEL MILEAGE? “We talk about it. I don’t think we talk about it a whole bunch. We were joking under the red flag and I said, because I get confused on what he’s thinking because I don’t really know when I’m just driving the car around in circles and he’s calling the race. I asked him, ‘Hey, do you want to tell me the game plan or do you just want me to drive and I’ll figure it out later on?’ And he gave me the, ‘Yeaaaaaaaah.’ So that means everything without saying anything, I know that, so the cool thing about the chemistry that Todd and I have, and really the whole 22 team has, is that we communicate without even saying anything. We know each other very well and that just comes from spending a lot of time together and building those relationships up. It’s not just between the driver and the crew chief, but it’s the whole team. They’re a real family. They hang out together away from the race track and I think that shows every week. They have a lot of fun together. It’s not very often you have a team that has a lot of fun that’s also very successful and understands how to work hard, and that’s what we’ve got with this 22 team and really all of Team Penske, the way we all work together and build fast race cars. It’s very fun to be a part of.”
DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD GET A ROAD COURSE WIN WITH ALL THE TRACK TIME YOU’VE GOTTEN THIS YEAR ON THEM? “I keep trying. Eventually you hope you break through. I said in here yesterday I remember the first time I came here and I was so frustrated because I didn’t know how to go fast. A lot of times you can point out an area you’re slow and know what you need to go faster, and I was lost. It just takes a long time to figure out these race tracks and figure out what you need in your car and be able to communicate that. We put a lot of work into road courses, in particular Watkins Glen, on trying to build a fast race car and understanding what we’ve got to do. Hard work equals results. We say that all the time at Team Penske. It’s a quote that’s up in the gym that we read everytime we go in there. It really does. It’s something to live by.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – HOW GRATIFYING IS IT TO WIN AFTER THOSE INITIAL STRUGGLES? “Very, not just for being able to sweep the weekend, but from finishing second a lot lately and to see the checkered flag without a car in front of me for once, so it felt really, really good. Team Penske, the last four races in a row, one of our cars finished second. Brad finished second a couple of times and so did we, so it feels good to break through and not be the bridesmaid anymore and actually get the checkered flag and have some fun. I think that was a little extra emotion at the end of the race. It’s a good thing it’s a long track because I was going crazy inside the car for about a lap afterwards. It’s pretty cool.”
CAN YOU COMPARE THE FEELING OF WINNING A FUEL MILEAGE RACE TO LOSING ONE? “Losing sucks a lot more than winning (laughing).” IF YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO WIN A FUEL MILEAGE RACE 50 PERCENT OF THE TIME WOULD IT BE FUN TO DO OR IS IT FRUSTRATING EVEN WHEN YOU’RE WINNING IT? “I’d take winning 50 percent of the time any time. That would be a hell of a record to be able to do that. To win a fuel mileage race, most of the time, you have to have a fast car as well – most of the time. You have to be running up in the top-5. I think Matt was running fifth last week, or maybe even closer to the front, when he won. He had a fast race car. He didn’t really luck into it. It’s not like he was running 20th and won the race. He had a fast car and won the race. Today, we had a top-3 car. We executed the plan and we won the race. You know coming down to these things at the end of the race and you need a caution or you want it to go green, whatever ending you’re on, you’ve just got to work the plan and if it doesn’t work out, oh well, we swung the bat. That’s really the position we’re in right now with where we are in points and with a win. We’ve got to swing the bat. What have we got to lose? If we don’t make it and we finish 30th, oh well. We tried to win the race. We’re fortunate to be able to race that way right now for the next few weeks and today it’s fun to be on the ‘know you have enough gas and be aggressive,’ instead of ‘how much can you save and do you think you’ve saved enough.’ I’m not really good when I’m on that end. I really have one speed and it’s just go and Todd knows that. It’s hard for me to check up, so when you hear we’re right on it with gas, you just say, ‘I’m gonna drive this thing hard,’ and that’s kind of where I excel.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – DO YOU FEEL YOU’RE IN A BETTER PLACE AS A TEAM THIS YEAR COMPARED TO LAST? “I would say if you look at our statistics it would say yes. We’ve got more top-5s, more top-10s, more poles, the same number of wins we had at this point last year. The team as a group, as Joey talked about, I think team chemistry and continuity is at a level that we’ve not been at. We continue to grow that and we’re knocking on the door. We’re building momentum at the right time. We’ve been top-5 contenders every week here lately, the last month. We’ve found some speed in our race cars at the shop. I think as the aero packages have moved we’ve been able to react to those very successfully. That’s a testament to everybody at Team Penske back at the shop that they give us the information that we need to work forward, but I think we’re in the right position. Obviously, continuing to find speed and continue to need to find a little more speed. Everybody always needs that, so to where we’re at, yeah, I think every year we stay together it’s great because everybody knows what everybody else is thinking to Joey’s point. He drives the race car and I call the race and we don’t argue about that. It’s very clear as to what each of us need to do and the team does a phenomenal job of everybody executing, whether that’s pit crew, whether that’s engineers, whether that’s mechanics in the garage, I’ve got the greatest support team behind us and I look forward to what we can do.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — HOW IS YOUR APPROACH DIFFERENT THIS TIME FOR MICHIGAN WITH THE NEW RULES PACKAGE? “Honestly, there are a lot of unknowns. We just ran a race a few weeks ago at Indy with it and I think when there’s a rules change it’s a lot of work on the teams, for sure, but I also think it’s not a bad thing for Team Penske. I think we’re able to put together a package pretty quick a lot of times when there is a rules change and we’re able to take advantage of the opportunity that’s lying there for us. That’s just because of hard work and the tools that we’ve got and the way that we know how to use them. I’m proud of that. If there’s a race, we’re gonna go to every one. It’s a unique package obviously, but we’ve got to do what we can to try to rack up some more wins. That’s what it’s all about.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – “To what happens next week, I think to second his thought, it’s an opportunity to see where it takes us and where it goes, but we’ve had a lot of speed at Michigan. It’s our first win as a duo, so we’ve been good there and been competitive for wins. I think actually the spring race was probably one of our weakest and we understand why. I’m looking forward to seeing where this new aero package takes us going back there because I think it plays into our hand. I think we understand a little bit about it, but I think it plays into some of the things we like in our race cars – Joey and myself and this Shell/Pennzoil team. I’m excited to get back there and see what happens because we didn’t run too bad at Indy with it, but we just didn’t quite get there.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – IS IT SAFE TO SAY YOU HAVE A NEW FAVORITE TRACK? “I was sitting here thinking as soon as we figured out how to win here they’re gonna tear the race track apart (laughing). I left some cool marks on it. Hopefully I can take that chunk of the race track where I did some donuts on it, but I always enjoyed coming to road courses, but I was never very successful at them before. It kind of worked out well today, but I like all the race tracks. I’m not prejudiced. They’re all fun in their own way and in different ways. I just think it’s cool that we do something different every week. We’re going from a road course to a two-mile race track. That’s pretty cool that we have sport where we can race different race tracks and different disciplines that takes something different as a driver and as a team and something I’m very proud of is that this team has won at short tracks like Bristol and mile-and-a-halves like Texas and superspeedways earlier this year at Daytona and now a road course. That’s a well-rounded team and I’m proud to be a part of that because not only as a driver does it take a lot of different things, but as a team it takes a completely different attitude every time we go to a different race track like that. It just goes to show what Team Penske is capable of doing.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT CLICKED THIS WEEKEND FOR YOU? “It’s not like it was one thing and, boom, all of a sudden we figured it out. I feel every time I’ve come here as a driver we’ve gotten a little faster, we’ve gotten a little bit more competitive and the last few times we’ve had close to a top-5 car and been running in the top-10 and were borderline there. I felt like this weekend we made some changes to our car to really understand what we needed in certain sections of the race track and saw speed because of that. Is there still areas I look at and where we can improve our race car? Oh yeah. We can definitely make our race car a lot better and as a driver can I look at areas I can become better? Yeah, for sure. Like I said, we were a very good car today, and if we would have had clean air we probably would have stayed up there, if we got the lead, but we can always be faster. You never just sit still and say, ‘Yep, we’re good enough. We’ve figured out how to win and that’s it.’ There’s always areas to improve on and get better at.”
