Ford Performance NASCAR Notes and Quotes
Daytona 500 Media Day – Daytona International Speedway
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – WHY DO YOU RACE? “Because I’m not good at anything else (laughing). I didn’t try hard at anything else. This is the only thing I’ve really tried hard at, and it’s just something I really enjoyed as a kid and put all my eggs in one basket.”
AUSTIN DILLON SAID YOU WERE ONE OF THE THREE BEST RESTRICTOR PLATE RACERS GOING NOW. DO YOU AGREE? “That’s an awesome compliment. That’s really cool. I don’t know if I ever looked at myself like that. Denny is really good as well. I do think I’ve made some big gains from where I used to be when it comes to speedway racing. That’s an awesome compliment. I’m flattered by it. I think as a race car driver you always look to be better at certain things and I remember when I first started speedway racing I wasn’t very good at all and I’ve worked really hard at it to become better. We’ve been able to be competitive at them and win these races, but I guess as a driver when you put your helmet on you feel that you’re the best one out there. That’s the way I feel when I put my helmet on. I’m confident enough to say I’m the best race car driver out there, but I guess at the same time after the race I’m able to look back at the race and say, ‘Why did I do that? I screwed this up. I did that wrong.’ I’m able to still find a lot of things that I can be a lot better at.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE MARGIN FOR ERROR IN THIS RACE BEING BASICALLY ZERO? “It’s exhausting because there’s a lot going on. If you’re trying to race up front the whole time, it’s an exhausting race. If you’re running around in the back, which I don’t think anyone is gonna do now with the new format, but there’s a lot going through your mind. You have to try to see what’s going on a lap ahead all the time, and that’s really hard to put all of that together because to be able to do that you have to have great information from behind and what your spotter sees, and you have to have that communication really well, and then you have to see runs forming, and you have to know who you’re racing against and what type of moves they’re prone to making. You have to process all of that information before you make that split-second move when that opportunity comes up to make that big pass. So it makes it a lot of fun because we always call it a high-speed chess match, but you’ve got to be quick. When that opportunity is there, you have to take it. If you hesitate for a second, the hole is gone, you don’t make the pass, so you’ve got to be quick, but you’ve also got to be able to process all of this information and kind of see it coming before it happens.”
IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE WITH A DOMINANT CAR WITH 15 OR 20 LAPS TO GO. “That sucks (laughing).” CAN THAT COST YOU THE DAYTONA 500? “It can, and sometimes it’s not the end of the world, too. Sometimes you’re able to come back. Twenty laps is still pretty far as long as you don’t go all the way to the back. You can afford to make a mistake as long as the mistake isn’t going back to 20th, it’s going back to fifth or sixth. That’s one thing. These races, I don’t think people realize it as much, but track position is big at superspeedway racing. We’ve seen drivers be able to go from 10th to first in the last lap, yeah, that can happen, it doesn’t happen often these days. Everyone is very good at this type of drafting stuff and if they’re in the blocks and the runs are hard to get – the run I had at the end of the Clash was one of the longest runs I’ve had and was able to kind of keep it going as I worked my way up to the back of Brad’s bumper, but those don’t come along often. I was in the right situation at the right time to be able to have that run big enough to push Brad to get next to Denny.”
HOW HARD IS IT TO WIN BACK-TO-BACK DAYTONA 500s THESE DAYS? “Pretty tough. Speedway racing, probably more than anything else, it’s hard to consistently keep winning for a lot of different reasons. Obviously, everyone is so close. It’s not like the dominant car wins all the time. A fast car definitely helps, but everyone is so close and there are so many things that can happen. Everyone says that you can’t control your own destiny that much, sometimes you can’t, but I still like to think I can, but it does matter a lot on what other people do. That’s why you have to be almost in their head knowing what they’re about to do.”
WHAT HAS YOUR TEAM FOUND WITH FORD THAT THE OTHER TEAMS HAVEN’T? “I don’t know. I’ve got ideas and I won’t tell you what those are, but do I think we’re the fastest cars? I don’t know. I think we have quick cars. I don’t know if we’re that far superior to everyone else. I look at the Gibbs cars and they’re able to be fast. The Hendrick cars are able to qualify really well. I think everyone has their own style and I think that’s kind of being shown more as Speedweeks go and as speedway racing evolves. The game has changed a lot, and, to be honest, I think the Gibbs cars have changed the game more than anything. Like I said on Sunday, how selfless they are. They’re able to say, ‘Hey, you’re the guy in the lead and all four of us are gonna line up and we’re not gonna throw blocks, we’re not gonna try to pass you, we’re gonna stay in a straight line and it makes them really hard to pass. The only way you pass them is you’ve got to have a team that’s stronger that’s able to pick them apart one at a time and that’s what we were able to do. But when was the last time we’ve seen that kind of teamwork in this sport? It doesn’t happen often. They did it in the 500 here last year and they did it again in the Clash, so it will be interesting to see what they do here in the next couple of races.”
WOULD IT BE HARD FOR YOU TO PUSH BRAD TO A WIN ON THE LAST LAP OR WOULD YOU TRY TO WIN IT FOR YOURSELF? “I had the opportunity to pass Brad on that last lap, but I would have finished second. What good is that? At that point I had to process it quick enough to say, ‘OK, if I keep this run I finish behind Denny and they win the race. Or I can push my teammate and I finish second and my teammate wins the race.’ Well, that sounds a lot better for Team Penske in my opinion, so I started pushing Brad and I gave him the run that was big enough for him to get there and at that point he was gonna win the race and I was gonna finish second, or they were gonna crash and I was gonna win the race. They crashed and I won the race, so it worked out great for me. Unfortunately for them they crashed, but it was a move I felt like was the right move at the time. I had to do it just from a big picture scope of things and ultimately we kind of got rewarded for doing the right thing, I guess.”
IS THERE KIND OF A FEELING THAT IF YOU HELP SOMEONE OUT ONCE THAT THEY’LL RETURN THE FAVOR AT SOME POINT OR IS IT ALWAYS EVERY DRIVER FOR HIM OR HER SELF? “It’s just kind of the way the situations go. You can’t really plan on, ‘OK, you get in front of me and I’m gonna push you today.’ It doesn’t really work like that. It’s more just kind of how it falls out. We expect each other (teammates) to work with each other right off the bat. We expect it. Roger expects it. Our crew chiefs expect it. It’s known that we’re gonna have to work with each other to win these races, not just Brad and I but all the Fords. I think kind of the part we left out here is what Kevin was able to do. The two of us couldn’t break up four cars. There’s no way that was gonna happen, but three of us could and we were able to do that. That was something special to be able to get three fast cars to be able to do that. I think that Ford alliance with Stewart-Haas cars and the Roush cars out there as well are really gonna help us with this speedway racing as it seems like teams are getting more committed to each other.”
WERE YOU SURPRISED HOW EFFECTIVE YOU WERE AT BREAKING THEM UP? “I wish it was easy. It took us the whole race to figure out how to do it and we almost ran out of time. No, it wasn’t easy. The side draft is huge like it’s always been. Brad is probably the best at doing that leapfrog or what he calls the island hop, whatever you want to call it, and we were able to pull them apart and get in a hole and pull another one apart and get in the hole. He’s really good at that, probably better than anybody at it, so he was the right guy at the right time. It was the perfect storm. I feel like my strength is being a very aggressive, strong pusher and able to use runs quick. He’s able to be very strategic on where he gets behind cars and being able to pull them apart, so as a team we’re able to use our strengths together and that’s what pulled everyone apart, along with Harvick behind us keeping us all together as best he could.”
DO YOU HAVE A FEEL FOR WHAT THE DYNAMIC OF THE RACE IS GOING TO BE? “You can see it building. A lot of times you can see the top forming and sometimes you see that freight train against the wall, you can see that forming. There are times now you see the Gibbs bandwagon coming together and you’re like, ‘OK, this is about to happen.’ So the race changes its complexion a lot throughout the race depending on pit cycles and how people are teamed up and who is leading, really. That’s what changes the whole look of the race. Some leaders like to stay on the bottom and some like Junior will ride the fence. It just depends on who is up front and where they go and that whole lane will get pulled up depending on how they do it.”
CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW THE LAST LAP SET UP FOR YOU? “It all started off of turn two. I missed a block on Kyle Busch and I got shuffled to the middle and I was in trouble. The 24 got behind me and pushed me down the backstretch enough to keep up, pushed me again off of turn four, which broke me free of the three-wide situation, which gives you a ton of speed when you’re able to kind of break up out of that. I needed that bubble pusher – two-wide in front of me – the 3 and the 18 – had just enough room underneath the 3 to squeak in underneath him, pull him back, and then jump right up in front of him again, get another push from the 3 to keep that run going. At that point I had the big run to Brad. Brad had two or three car lengths to Denny, which he was able to carry that run and the draft up to the 11 and make the move to get underneath him.”
HOW RARE IS IT TO HAVE A RUN LIKE THAT? “It doesn’t happen that often. That was the biggest one I’ve seen. You usually don’t have a run that lasts the whole straightaway. Usually they build by halfway or a quarter of the way down the straightaway. As soon as I got off of turn four I had the run, and was able to make it last all the way down into turn one. That was pretty neat.”
DID YOU AND BRAD DRIVE TANKS THE OTHER DAY? “Yeah, we did (laughing). We have a friend about an hour from here that has a few tanks and some really cool toys, so we got to drive a tank. My wife drove a tank. That was one of the coolest parts. I feel like my wife is a total badass now, so I think that’s kind of neat. You kind of feel indestructible when you’re driving a tank. There’s not much stopping you in that thing. They’re fast, too. It’s crazy how fast they go. It was a 50-something tank and that thing was crazy. It was neat.”
DID SHE TALK ABOUT THE SHARK EPISODE? “Isn’t that crazy. She was at the beach and this guy was fishing and he started reeling something in right in front of her and it was a shark. The thing was about four feet long. It was a pretty big shark. It was big enough to make me not go swim in the ocean. It was kind of cool. I think they went and cooked it right there on the pier over by the boardwalk.”
HOW DO YOU SEE THE FORMAT CHANGING HOW YOU PLAN TO RUN A RACE? “For me as driver nothing changes because I’m as wide-open as I can be. I don’t have a slower gear. It’s high speed all the time and I’m gonna try to pass everyone everytime I can, so that part doesn’t change for me. For Todd, it changes it quite a bit and the way he calls a race because you’re calling a race not for the end of the race, it’s for lap 60. That changes the strategy a lot. Maybe sometimes you say, ‘the heck with lap 60’ and you go for 120. It’s gonna be interesting how this evolves the next few weeks, especially with all the different types of race tracks we hit right off the bat. It’s gonna make it a lot of fun. The most interesting part to me will be how it changes from the first time we go to a mile-and-a-half to the second time we go to a mile-and-a-half because the crew chiefs are gonna evolve a lot and figure out what works best and figure out what other people do and all.”
WILL YOU HIT THE RESET BUTTON ON THOSE STAGES? “No, not for me.” YOU’LL TREAT IT LIKE A CAUTION? “I’m gonna race hard to that point to try to get the points that I can, like I normally do. There’s no difference there for me because I think track position is important and I race hard for that. Now there’s something for everyone to race for and I think for most drivers that will affect a lot. For me, like I said, I’ve got one gear. Todd makes fun of me all the time because I don’t have patience and I want to go all the time, but that’s who I am.”
WHAT STUCK OUT TO YOU THE MOST ABOUT THE FORMAT CHANGE THAT YOU LIKE THE MOST? “I think having more restarts is a good thing for the sport. I think the natural breaks are good for fans and for TV in the race. I think those are important. I think having points scored during the event, I like that a lot. I don’t know if I can pick a favorite. I like everything about it, though. In all honesty, the toughest part is trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t know it, but once you understand it, it’s a no-brainer that it’s gonna be awesome for our sport. That’s my opinion.”
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO UNDERSTAND IT? “Not very long because I was in the meetings coming up with it. I was in the middle of it, but you don’t have to completely understand it. You’ve just got to know that it’s gonna be a great race, there’s a lot more to race for, drivers are going to be more aggressive – end of story. That’s pretty much the bottom line to this whole thing. Every race is gonna be more important. We’re not gonna be at the end of the race after you win the Daytona 500 that you’re in test mode for 25 races. That’s the worst thing you could ever write down isn’t it? So we’re not gonna be doing that because Atlanta helps us get to Homestead and race for a championship. Every race becomes more important. That’s a great thing. I think as a fan, when you go to a race, you can say you’ve watched your driver get to Miami in one of the first 10 races of the year. That’s cool. You couldn’t say that in the past. There are so many positives that come out of this thing that had to be done.”
WERE THE FANS FOREMOST IN YOUR MIND WITH THIS MODEL? “Yeah, we wanted the fan to enjoy this and how do we make fans see great racing? We’ve got to add these intense moments in the races. That’s what people want to watch. In football it’s a third down situation. It puts you in those moments three times throughout a race now, which is really cool. And there will still be green flag pit stops, and the old-school racing NASCAR side of it that we’ve come to get used to and love, but we’re gonna have a little bit of both now and that’s pretty neat.”
WHAT HAS DAYTONA MEANT TO YOU AND THE SPORT? “Daytona has always been special. I don’t think there’s a driver in here that doesn’t think it’s not special. You’re down here for a while. You kind of almost look like it as a second home because you live here for a while. Just like everyone else does, you guys do too, you get excited because you’ve been home all winter and you get excited to get back at the race track and go racing. But it’s a fun place to come to with the history behind it and how big the Daytona 500 is. We don’t do this for any other race, really, unless you’re going for a championship in Miami. This is because it’s the biggest race of the year. This is a big deal to us, to come down here and have a shot at winning it, so I get excited about that. There are a lot of things that get you pumped up, but knowing what you’re racing for and the prestige that comes along with winning the 500 is incredible, so we work really hard to get it.”
THIS IS MICHAEL WALTRIP’S FINAL RACE. DO YOU KNOW HIM VERY WELL? “I know him. I don’t know how well I know him, but I’ve obviously been around the sport and talked to him quite a few times. It’s an amazing accomplishments. You think 30 500’s, that’s crazy. Where am I at? Nine? Ten maybe? I’ve got a long ways to go.”
HE SEEMS LIKE ONE OF THE NICE GUYS IN THIS SPORT? “Oh yeah, for sure. I think everyone likes Michael. I don’t think anyone has really ever had a problem with him. I know I haven’t. He seems like a really nice guy.”
YOU WON A RACE AFTER DRAGGING YOUR JACK AT TALLADEGA. CAN YOU DO THAT AT DAYTONA? “I’d rather not, but we can if we decide to. I’d rather not.” BUT THIS IS A RACE YOU CAN COME BACK FROM SOMETHING LIKE THAT? “Oh, yes. You can come back from stuff in any race, in my opinion. You never count yourself out because there are so many things that happen in sports. You can just watch the Super Bowl. When you think you’re out, you come back like the Patriots, baby (laughing).”
DO YOU FEEL YOUR PERSONALITY IS TAKEN AWAY WITH SOME OF THE SPONSOR THINGS AND THE RESPONSIBILITY YOU HAVE AS A DRIVER? “No, I really feel like I am who I am – love it or leave it. That’s me. I’m very fortunate to have an owner that’s not a guy who his going to have a choke hold on you if you say something wrong. Roger is a very open person. He’s fun to have that conversation with. I have a sponsor in Shell and Pennzoil that I obviously don’t go out there and be an idiot, but they let me say what I want to say. For me, I am who I am. Sorry if that’s not enough star power for you, but I am who I am. No one tells me to be a certain way.”
WHAT’S YOUR INTEREST IN A CAR LIKE THE MODEL T YOU HAVE? “You feel like you’re going fast in that. I just love antique, unique cars. You mention the Model T and that’s obviously unique, and there were a lot of them that were built, but it’s something really, really fun to drive. It’s so different and hard and challenging to drive because it’s backwards from what you’ve learned. The first time I drove it, I was like, ‘Whoa, I’ve got to do this and this.’ I’m pushing the wrong pedals. I’m going when I want to stop. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a mess.’ So after that you’re like, ‘I want to have one of these because it’s hard to drive.’ That was the main reason. When you’re going 30, you feel like you’re going 100. It’s a 1924. I drive it a lot. I drive it probably a couple times a month.”
WHAT OTHER KINDS OF CARS LIKE THAT DO YOU HAVE? “Too many. It’s my weakness. I don’t know if it’s a weakness or not, I enjoy it, but it’s kind of my hobby. I like antique cars and looking around for things that are just out there and unique and crazy.”
