Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Ford EcoBoost 400 Advance – Homestead-Miami Speedway
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Travis Geisler, NASCAR Competition Director for Team Penske, was part of a teleconference today discussing this weekend’s Championship 4 in which Joey Logano will be one of four drivers competing for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship. Here is a transcript of Geisler’s comments.
TRAVIS GEISLER, NASCAR Competition Director, Team Penske
HAS ROGER PENSKE TALKED TO YOU GUYS ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF WANTING TO WIN THIS TITLE ON THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF TEAM PENSKE? “Certainly, I think any year it’s important for us to go and meet the expectation from him, which is a championship. But this year I think he never came out and said, ‘Hey, it’s important to do it this year because it’s our 50th,’ but we all felt the pressure. We all felt the importance of it. It’s no different than when we go to Indianapolis. Winning at the Brickyard is something that we need to go and do for him. There aren’t many things that he hasn’t done in his career or new or unique for him, so anytime that possibility is there we’ve got to go and try to execute. I think that’s certainly been our goal to make those guys proud. It’s amazing to be a part of a race team that’s been at the top level of racing for 50 years. I don’t really believe there are many out there that are able to do that, so for us to have the opportunity now to go and compete after winning Phoenix, I think everybody has the momentum and certainly the focus to go and try to accomplish this goal.”
DID THE BULLETIN ABOUT THE TRUCK TRAILING ARMS HAVE ANY IMPACT ON YOU GUYS? “The bulletin really didn’t have any impact on us. Fortunately, I think it was more of a clarification of something that was pretty clear. The intent of that in the rule book was clear ahead of time, so I think if anybody had changes to make, they would have been pretty far outside what is kind of the accepted norm for those parts. I think it was an effort on NASCAR’s part to make sure everybody was crystal clear there. Obviously, the importance of Phoenix and Homestead as must-win races kind of threw everybody in it. I kind of applaud them for putting it out there and make sure it’s clear, but it wasn’t anything that really impacted us.”
WHEN YOU SEE SOMETHING LIKE THAT THIS LATE IT’S ASSUMED SOMEBODY MAY HAVE BEEN DOING SOMETHING THAT WARRANTED A RULES CHANGE. IS THAT AN ERRONEUS ASSUMPTION? “No, I think usually that’s the assumption. I think in this situation if you look a few weeks ago the kind of a preview for the 2017 rules came out and there was some language in there that kind of spoke to this point as a clarification of the rules. I think they just decided that once it had been out there as kind of a precursor to the 2017 rules that they needed to go ahead and make sure that clarification was made for ’16 as well to ensure that there wasn’t any confusion there. It may have impacted somebody, I’m not sure, but I can speak for our side of it and, for us, it really wasn’t any impact.”
DOES THIS FORMAT FAVOR ANY ONE OF THE DRIVERS THAT MIGHT BE MORE AGGRESSIVE IN THEIR STYLE THAN FINESSE? “That’s a really good question. There are certain situations where that is probably the case. I think that there are drivers who are better at amassing 36 weeks of very good races across all the different styles of race tracks, and I think the one thing you end up with this Chase format is it’s always the same tracks. You always end up with kind of the same cutoff races. You look at Phoenix and would say, ‘Man, Harvick really just has a clear advantage at that track compared to anybody else.’ You look at Martinsville and you might say that Hendrick has a clear advantage just over the history of how they’ve raced there. I think that’s kind of what we see more than anything is that the Chase may be favor drivers or teams that perform well at certain race tracks. That’s probably what we see more than anything. That being said, I would say that if you look at Brad’s ability to kind of produce top-5 finishes every week, it’s something he probably benefits more from than the ultra-aggressive, throw-it-out-on-the-line kind of strategy that some other drivers have. It’s a little different. I think everybody is trying to figure it out still. Every year it evolves. Every year we learn more about it. We see new ways to make it into the final four and we see new ways to get knocked out of it. I think it’s become very clear that DNFs or mechanical issues or anything crash-related is really almost a nail in the coffin for you. You’ve got to have perfectly clean races and winning certainly in that final round it’s pretty clear having all three that transferred win, so you had to be the point leader to make it. It’s certainly a challenge.”
DO YOU SEE ALL FOUR DRIVERS THIS WEEKEND EQUAL IN NATURE WHEN IT COMES TO BEING AGGRESSIVE? “I think whenever you put the championship on the line with guys of that caliber they’re gonna be pretty darn aggressive. I think all of them will find a way to be ultra-aggressive at that point. I think there are certainly guys that maybe that’s more of their style than others, but I think when you put them all in a box like that, they’re all gonna find a way to be that aggressive. It may not happen at the beginning of the race. If you’ve watched that race play out, the track moves around a lot from kind of the top, middle and even the bottom sometimes plays a little bit for grooves, so you’ll see guys moving around kind of figuring out what works best for them, and by the end of the race I think you’ll see a lot of like what we saw at Phoenix – all the cars that were really in contention or had to do something found a way to get to the front. I think if you looked at the middle of the race at Phoenix it was pretty spread out still, but by the end everybody is there and I wouldn’t expect much different out of this class of four that we’re gonna see at Homestead Sunday.”
DOES WINNING PHOENIX GIVE THE TEAM MOMENTUM FOR THIS WEEKEND? “Unquestionably. He was really fired up after that win. It was a hard-fought race. If you noticed, we were pretty good on short runs and was able to kind of get out and make some track position, but as the run went on we faded and it really became a struggle. I think at one point there we were out of it and it was looking a little bleak as to how we were gonna get ourselves back in it, so to come back from that as a team and execute really well on pit road, put together a really good race, I think that momentum is something you can’t replace, especially with somebody going for their first championship. He knows coming in that he’s led the bracket, I guess, for the last three – if you look at the Chase bracket NASCAR puts out his name has been at the top for the last three. He’s certainly planning on his name being in the last box and having a chance to win at a track that hasn’t been one of our best tracks. I think it’s been since ’98 that Team Penske has won there, so to be able to kind of put ourselves back on the map at that track and go out there when everybody needed to perform and come out with a win, I think he’s definitely feeling he can do the same thing again.”
HOW MUCH HAS BRAD HELPED JOEY MAKE THE TRANSITION TO FITTING INTO THE PENSKE MOLD? “I think it’s no secret that Brad was a real proponent of Joey. I think the time they spent racing each other in the XFINITY Series showed Brad what Joey was capable of and that he probably had more talent that what we had seen with his performance on the Cup side. I think he helped push to get him in the fold and once he got here he did a really good job of making sure he was well supported enough from the decision-making standpoint of what you need to do as a driver, what you need to do personally, and some of the things Joey really had to evolve. I think it was a big change for him. When he got put into his role when he was over at Gibbs I think he struggled with that. He went into a team with a championship driver and stepped in there as the young, fresh kid on the block, and I think the first couple years confidence and just his performance struggled. I think when he came to Penske knowing that Brad was a major supporter of his, I think all of us were excited to have him. We were looking forward to what he could bring because we had seen his performance on the XFINITY side. I think all of that rolled together gave him the confidence to go out there and do what he’s done for us. I think his career has been pretty amazing since he’s got with us. We’re all still really excited to have him. I know him and Todd, those two are tied at the hip. They trust each other 100 percent, but they also challenge each other, which I think is really important in that relationship. You can’t just take everything for granted. You’ve got to push each other, and I think that’s what they do really well, more so than any groups I’ve seen. It’s exciting to have a relationship like that between your drivers, and it’s really not a whole lot different with Ryan Blaney. He obviously drives for the Wood Brothers, but he’s still involved with our guys a lot. He still runs our XFINITY car and you see a lot of the same things happening with him, and I think that strength goes from our drivers down through our teams and when everybody who works on the cars sees that kind of relationship at the top, they’re gonna do the same with their peers. So the car chiefs all dig in together and help. There are always a lot of different colored uniforms working on problems throughout the weekend. From my role as kind of trying to help create that environment, you can’t really replace the drivers being willing to work together the way ours do.”
