Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Toyota SaveMart 350 – Sonoma Raceway
Friday, June 24, 2016
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Fusion, has had two weeks to enjoy his victory at Michigan International Speedway. He spoke to the media between NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice sessions on Friday to talk about this weekend’s first road course race of the season.
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – WHY HAVE THERE BEEN 10 DIFFERENT WINNERS IN THE LAST 11 RACES HERE? IT’S A WILD CARD RACE FOR SURE. “I think it’s obviously like any other road course we go to strategy comes into play a lot. Rewatching the race here from last year Kurt Busch was the fastest car, hands-down, and maybe the 48 was the second-fastest car and neither one of them won. It takes everything is what I’m trying to get to – to win this race, not just a fast car, but it takes the right strategy, it takes everything for it all to work out. It’s not about where you start, it’s where you finish this thing and it’s so challenging to have everything play out just right and have the cautions play out just right with your strategy. I’m not saying it takes luck because I believe you create your own luck, but you’ve got to have a couple circumstances go your way.”
HOW DO YOU KEEP YOUR COOL WHEN IT’S A HOT DAY AND THE TRACK IS SLIPPERY? “I’m glad we won a couple of weeks ago. That part is nice to be able to come into a race track like this. Like you said, there are a lot of unknowns. Tempers will flare and a lot of times it’s because you’re trying to stop a really heavy stock car into that turn over there (turn 11-12), which is basically a U-turn with no banking in the middle of a parking lot kind of feeling, and there are a couple of those around this race track. When that happens mistakes happen, people trying to slow down their cars, wheel-hopping, tires are old, all that stuff and that’s a big opportunity to pass people. Feeling get hurt pretty quick and that’s just part of it. It’s part of what I call short-track racing and that’s what this race track basically is, so keeping your cool is of the utmost importance throughout this race because at some point someone is gonna run into you and you’re probably gonna run into somebody. That’s part of it and you just have to remember what the big picture is.”
WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET COMING INTO THIS RACE NOW THAT YOU HAVE A WIN THIS SEASON? “It’s nice. We had a nice cushion going into Michigan to where we felt like we could still race hard and race aggressive. We weren’t on the edge of falling out by points or anything like that, but it does take a little bit of, I don’t want to call it pressure, but it relieves you a little bit to where you can say, ‘OK, we’re in.’ That’s definitely nice and, like I said, coming to a race track like this it’s really nice. I feel like this is a good little relief for our race team and we can now start focusing in on making our cars faster for the Chase.”
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE CHALLENGES THE DIFFERENT ELEVATION CHANGES PRESENT ON THIS TRACK? “It’s really cool. Turn one is really steep up the hill, so you don’t really use much brake. It’s very deceiving. It doesn’t look very steep, but it really slows down the cars a lot. It’s quite the uphill, and then the top of 3A is the opposite and you crest that corner and you can’t see anything before you get to the top of it. And then the car gets really, really light. Obviously, you just kind of crest on top of the hill and the car feels like it wants to jump and you’re trying to turn and put the power to the ground with the tires and it’s a big challenge over there. But that makes it a lot of fun and then you’re trying to stop into turn four, which is downhill and you’re trying to slow down the car and it’s even harder to stop the car, so those are kind of the big elevation changes around here. After that there are definitely some elevation changes, but not as much. But I like the element that brings and how you drive the car different anticipating the load to gain or lose as you see hills – or in this case, mountains.”
HOW MUCH DOES THE OFF TIME AFFECT YOU AS A DRIVER AND THE TEAM OVERALL? “It’s nice. You guys all know that NASCAR racing has a very tough schedule and it’s nice to give your team a little bit of a break, especially at this point in the season. We’ve been running hard here for a while and it’s nice to get a little bit of a break in these hot summer months and allow them to have some time with their family. We have to remember to enjoy this a lot of times and I couldn’t have picked a better weekend after a win to have an off weekend. We’ve had two weekends to enjoy it, so that was nice for us, but I was ready to get back to it. By the time Sunday rolled around I was like, ‘Alright, I’m ready to go again,’ but it was definitely nice to take a step back and enjoy Father’s Day and all that.”
HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS THE FIRST PRACTICE AND HOW WILL IT HELP YOU FOR SUNDAY? “Sonoma is still Sonoma. Nothing has changed. We’re still fighting for some rear grip in our race car. I feel like we’ve made some gains since the last time we were here, which is great. Are we where we need to be yet? I don’t think so, but I think we’re a top-5 or top-6 car right now, which at this point last year during practice I’d say I was 15h to 20th-place car, so we’ve made some gains for sure. We’ve got another practice that I think we can definitely make our car a little bit better and work on qualifying trim.”
ARE YOU WISHING THERE WERE MORE ROAD COURSES OR DO YOU JUST WANT TO GET THROUGH SUNDAY AND MOVE ON? “Either way. I love that NASCAR racing doesn’t do the same thing every week. That’s what I love. If we ran road courses every week, I’d be sick of it. If we ran ovals every week, I’d get sick of running mile and a halves or half-miles or superspeedways. It’s cool that we do different things and we have to challenge ourselves as drivers and as race teams to develop packages to go fast at each track, and it takes it all at every single race track to win the championship. I love that challenge because there aren’t really other forms of motorsports that present that challenge of different types of race tracks and needing to be good at all of them to win.”
