Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Sprint All-Star Race – Charlotte Motor Speedway
Saturday, May 21, 2016
FORD NASCAR SPRINT CUP ALL-STAR RACE WINNERS
1986 – Bill Elliott
1991 – Davey Allison
1992 – Davey Allison
1994 – Geoffrey Bodine
1996 – Michael Waltrip
1998 – Mark Martin
2002 – Ryan Newman
2004 – Matt Kenseth
2005 – Mark Martin
2011 – Carl Edwards
2016 – Joey Logano
JOEY LOGANO PRESS CONFERENCE
TODD GORDON, Crew Chief – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “I thought it was pretty cool. It’s a different format with the 50-50-13 and it definitely brought some different strategies forward. I thought a quick synopsis of what we thought, but I thought our long-run speed was pretty good in the first section. The second section the cautions kind of almost seemed like it frustrated us because they didn’t let us get to where we were really good. But then the pit crew stepped up and performed and transitioned to the 13-lap final segment and got us a little bit there. You give Joey Logano four tires and at least eye shot of where the front row is and he elevates in that final and showed it again tonight.”
WALT CZARNECKI, Vice Chairman, Team Penske – “This is a special night for sure. First of all, to win this race. I know there’s a lot of conversation about the format, I think it’s fabulous (laughter). Having said that, this Shell/Pennzoil Ford team has just been so close all season long. Joey has had about four or five second-places and had a little bad luck so far this season, but has been in the thick of it since Daytona. So to get this breakout moment, I think is really significant for the way the team is going to perform for the remainder of the season, particularly beginning next week. Hats off to Todd and to the crew for the strategy and the way they executed, and I don’t want to forget the teammate, Brad Keselowski. Brad had a great Miller Lite Ford here tonight, so to finish one-two is a special night for Team Penske and for our partners at Ford.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – DID YOU GIVE ANY THOUGHT TO PLAYING FOR 12TH IN THE SECOND SEGMENT? “We did. Obviously, this race since the rules came out there’s been a lot of strategy thoughts put into it. We talked about the fact that if there are 20 cars on the lead lap and you bail back to 11th or 12th and start on the front row with 15-lap old tires and having four rows of cars that separate you from tires, I think in 13 laps you’re probably pretty safe. I really felt like as we looked through it there might be an accident or there would be cars laps down and as that number of cars that stayed there diminished that, I mean, we love to play offense. Joey is awesome on offense and if you watch us through the year at two-tire race tracks we take four tires a lot of times because that lets him be aggressive with it. He’s an aggressive driver, so I saw an opportunity that you could win the race that way, but the way it suits our style was to race forward. We worked our way on the 50-50 fence through the week and by the time we got to today it was, ‘Let’s get four tires and let’s go race forward,’ and that’s what we chased into today.”
WAS THERE NO MARGIN FOR ERROR HAVING THOSE 8 CARS BEHIND YOU? “For the guy that was staying on tires. I think a lot of things play into that. I got asked that by a couple of MRN guys before the race. I think it’s got to be a fluid decision because you don’t know how many cautions we’re gonna have after the 85. You could pit at 85, put four on it, and have a caution that eats up eight or nine laps of what’s left, and now the guy starting up front only have five or six laps on his tire. Five or six laps, I’ll take that versus stickers with two rows. But you don’t know what that’s gonna be, but as the race kind of worked on you saw that the lap down cars were there, so I felt like if you started fifth or sixth on four versus old tires, you’re probably in a good position. If you’ve got to start ninth or 10th, it’s probably a harder row to hoe.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “Awesome race. I thought it went great. What a great car. It says a lot about our race team to unload today with a completely new package, have 10 minutes of practice and unload and say, ‘The car is pretty good. I don’t have much to say.’ We really made only one change on our car. That was about the only amount of time we had in practice was to make one change. It was the same for everybody, but, overall, I felt like our car was competitive. We started the race and was able to move forward. We got lucky and not lucky at the same time. That caution came out and we lost three or four spots, but we didn’t get caught by not pitting when that caution came out and having to pit under green and all that stuff. I thought our car was fast the whole time, we just didn’t really show the speed in our car until the end. It was definitely a long-run car as well, but Todd made some good adjustments to help it fire off a little bit there at the end and be able to have a good restart finally. I had a few bad ones, so to have one good one there at the end helped, and being able to race Larson was a lot of fun. I knew what I was up against after watching the Showdown. I knew we were gonna race really hard. It’s for a million bucks and I was able to around lap six move up the race track and find some speed. Obviously, Kyle saw that and he moved up and then I knew I was gonna have to make the bottom work somehow. Once I had position on him going into the corner I had to make sure I kept him on the quarterpanel and not to the door. I knew he was gonna drive in to try and suck me around from the outside, and I knew I had to drive in to make sure he didn’t do that, and it was just good, hard racing there at the end. It was a lot of fun. He’s a heck of a racer. He’s gonna win a lot of races, that’s for sure, and it’s fun to race against him and it’s fun to see the youth in this sport. For me, starting eight years ago now, to see guys that are close to my age now and I get to race them for wins is a lot of fun.”
DID YOU THINK YOU WERE FINE WITH TIRES AND ABOUT THE FORMAT IN GENERAL? “There was a point I came over the radio and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t really want to know what’s going on. Let me drive the car and you call the race’ because I was confused. All I know is if there’s a car in front of me, we should pass them. That’s kind of where my head was. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think it is. It’s complicated for this man (Todd), but not so much for me. Sometimes the simple life is a little easier inside your race car. I had my hands full with enough things, so I was able to focus in on my job and Todd was able to focus in on his job. The whole falling back and trying to position yourself to the front didn’t really play because there were only two or three cars – I think a lot of cars got trapped on pit stops when the caution came out and they got trapped down a lap. It didn’t really play out like a lot of us thought it would when there are only three cars on old tires in front of you, so we got through them in the first corner and then it was like, ‘Alright.’ It was Larson and I for this thing. I felt confident that we had a very good shot at racing for the win when we were restarting there at the end.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED — WHAT IMPACT DID THE AERO CHANGES HAVE ON YOUR CAR TONIGHT? “I don’t know that I would say significant. I mean, Joey can answer from how they drive, but from a setup standpoint I thought it was something we could adapt to in 10 minutes or the 20 minutes of practice that we had. I think we’re all fairly smart to what’s going on. It was kind of an even loss for aerodynamic forces, so you didn’t have to make a huge balance shift in the car for it. It was something I think if guys had decent packages they at least had a foundation to build off of. I can’t speak for how they drive.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – “I thought the racing was significantly better than last year. As a racer out there, I remember this race last year and I’d get trapped because all you can do is run the bottom. That was last year. On the bottom, on the bottom and it’s really hard to pass someone because you can’t get clean air. It was a lot of fun as a driver tonight to be able to move up the race track and find speed. That’s something here at Charlotte at night that is very rare. You don’t see that at night here at Charlotte very often, so I think taking the downforce off these cars, being able to move to the right side of a car and be able to continue forward progress was really nice. It was really fun to be a part of that. I think it promoted a lot of side-by-side racing, a lot of passing. It took six or seven laps for the second lane to come in after the tires would wear a little bit, but the tires would definitely wear out, that’s for sure. There was definitely a lot of fall-off it felt like from inside the car and that’s what we want to see. That’s the reason for doing all this is to promote better racing, promote more tire fall-off. We saw that tonight. We saw a lot of side-by-side racing, saw a lot of fall-off. There was so much strategy that a lot of us didn’t know what was going on because there was so much strategy going on in this race, but that’s what it promoted. It promoted a lot of hard racing and I thought it was great.”
