Ford Notes and Quotes
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series (MENCS)
Ford 400 Advance (Homestead-Miami Speedway; Homestead, FL)
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Todd Gordon, crew chief for MENCS championship contender Todd Gordon, participated in a NASCAR teleconference Wednesday morning to discuss the upcoming Ford Championship weekend from the perspective of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford team.
Can you talk about what you and your team have been doing to prepare for Homestead the last couple of races after winning the first race in the Round of Eight and securing your spot in the championship?
TODD GORDON: “Yeah, I think definitely it gave us an opportunity winning Martinsville to kind of focus forward on our Homestead cars as they were being built and had the opportunity to take two cars to the wind tunnel and identify which one of the two was the better and pick our primary and backup out of that and continue to work on the cars. It’s been good because the shop becomes utterly focused to making those cars as good as they can be because they know that they’re going to race them for a championship. It’s been a productive couple weeks, and look forward to unloading at Homestead and seeing where we stack up speed‑wise.”
When you first became crew chief for Logano when he came over to Penske, what did you know about him? What did you think about him? And could you have envisioned what you all have accomplished through seven years together? “I felt like the path was there. The pieces before he came here and drove for us, I think the ‑‑ you know, the struggles or the lack of ‑‑ the performance that he was at in the 20 Cup car obviously wasn’t the level that we thought that he could get to. But in watching him in the Xfinity Series, I felt like from an outsider looking in that he and the 20 car could actually ‑‑ he could outrun Kyle half the time in the 18 car. So I felt like his ability to perform at a high level was equal to that of Kyle within the organization and just didn’t find the chemistry that they had on the Cup side. Looked forward to that coming over here, and I think he showed that pretty quickly in ’13 as we started our adventure to the point that we’re at today. But a lot of speed right off the bat and a very competitive person.”
What is it about him that allows him to be booed by a crowd after a race at Martinsville and kind of still think it’s kind of cool that so many people have that much emotion about what he does? “Well, I think you have to look at it and say that if people are making noise, whether it’s cheers or boos, that means that you’ve done something and you’re competitive. I think the great part about NASCAR racing is the passion of our fan base, and it’s passionate in both directions. You know, at the end of a day, if you’re up there and you have noise being made, I think it means that you’re doing the right things and you’re being competitive, because your fans are very passionately cheering you, but the fans of ‑‑ you have 39 competitors that their fans probably, if you’re very successful and you’re competitive, they’re going to make noise in the opposite direction. You know, volume speaks for what you’re able to accomplish, not necessarily the words that come out of it.”
I know you made the pit crew change with Graham after Kansas; has anything else changed with your pit crew going into this weekend? “No, it’s status quo going forward, and the great part of making that change was we had three races, three successful races ‑‑ well, two of them were. One we had a flat tire. But for those guys to build more chemistry and to build themselves forward. Look forward to that group. That group has been stellar. If you look at Martinsville, I would give them a fair amount of credit for putting us in position to win that race. They’ve done a great job there, and they’ve performed against the guys we’re racing against. There in Texas they did a phenomenal job and didn’t give them many opportunities at Phoenix to work on it.”
As a crew chief, coach type of person, what’s kind of been your philosophy with kind of working with him in regards to how you handle those situations, when to be aggressive, when it’s better to pull back a little bit, or is it a case of, look, it’s his own fight and he knows what he’s getting into, so don’t change anything with Joey? “Well, I think the pieces in our relationship, obviously we’ve been together for several years now, we talk about all situations as they happen on the racetrack and in retrospect afterwards. And we get together every week and just sit down and talk about what the weekend before entailed, whether it be how our race cars handled, how we strategized the race, incidents that happened during the race. I think the biggest thing is from a peer to peer, we talk through what’s happened, how we handle it, and how we could have done things differently or how we should have done things differently, if they needed to be done differently. I love his passion. You know, the one thing you’ve got to appreciate out of Joey is that he races ‑‑ he gives 100 percent. He’s racing all the time, and that’s a great attribute of his that he does. He’s up on it. You never have to question where we are, if it’s through practice or through any session. You’re getting 100 percent out of him, and that’s a great thing. He’s a racer. I think that’s a great part. But in how you handle these situations, there’s ‑‑ I’ll try to give him my opinion and let him form his direction out of that, and I think it’s a good relationship in that respect.”
This isn’t the first time you guys have made it to the Final Four. Your previous experience, has it changed anything that you’ve done in terms of preparing for this week, or are you just doing it like another race and another Final Four that you’ve been in before with the Championship 4 for this week with your team and with Joey? “Yeah, I think we’re trying to keep it as normal as possible. The first time into it in 2014, you didn’t know. I didn’t. It was a new format. It was new to everybody, but you didn’t know how to handle it or how the weekend was going to go. I didn’t because I really hadn’t been in that position to have one race that dictated a championship of a season. There was a lot more anxiety, I think, into the ’14 race, and the fear of the unknown. I think ’16 we raced into that race and just felt like we needed to handle it like the other races and continue to work forward, and I thought that was a decent approach to the weekend. I thought we were very competitive. I thought we were in a position that we could race for the championship late with 20 to go. That worked well, and I think the message to my guys and even to Joey, you get an opportunity to kind of ‑‑ the win at Martinsville allowed you to say, okay, we’re going. Now how do we strategize the week coming into it to make it where it’s what we’ve been doing. We tried to make this weekend as normal as we can in how we approach the weekend and how we’ve been racing the last ‑‑ throughout the playoffs, because if you look back at the last two mile‑and‑a‑halfs in the playoffs, we’ve had a fair amount of success. We’ve led a lot of laps. We’ve won a pole, and we’ve had speed, and we just need to continue to do those things, and we’ll be in a great position.”
From your perspective as a crew chief and of course knowing Joey very well, do you guys feel like you’re the championship favorite heading into Homestead this weekend? “I feel like we’ve got as good an opportunity as anybody. If you look back, the thing I would build off of is we led over 100 laps at Kansas at a progressively banked racetrack that’s similar banking to what Homestead is, not a high‑falloff racetrack, but it was a good place for us. We lost some track position and really didn’t recover from that to finish the way I think we could have, but we had a great run there, and I think at Texas, the 4 car was dominant at Texas, but beyond the 4 car, I thought we were as good as anybody and finished third there. Our mile‑and‑a‑half program I think through the summertime was lacking speed, and we just needed to understand how to make our race cars faster. Setup wise and everything. And I think we’ve continued to understand what we need to do to make ourselves faster, and we’re working on that, and I think through the last two mile‑and‑a‑halfs we’ve had speed. We’ve been competitive. We know what we’ve lacked when we haven’t executed completely. I look forward to that going forward, and I would say to the other three contenders here, I feel like we’ve got every bit of the speed that they do and every bit of the opportunity to win this championship.”
This weekend’s chassis, is it a previously used one or did you guys build a new car? “It’s a previously used one. I’m probably the least superstitious or passionate about car numbers. I think our guys here at the shop, we’ve got a fleet of cars, chassis wise, and the experience and the procedures that we have in building cars, I don’t feel that we have anything that’s any different between the cars. Couldn’t even tell you where this car raced last to be honest with you, and I don’t focus on that. We always try to build the best car we can, from the ‑‑ we did build two cars to go to Homestead, and we took both of them to the wind tunnel to see which one is better body‑wise, but they’re fresh body builds, but the chassis, they’re a couple years old. Every car that we have here at Team Penske goes back through a whole process. They come all the way back down to bare metal and no paint on them before we start the procedure of putting a body back on them. Car is as fresh as any car we have in the fleet, and I feel like it’s a good car to go race for a championship with.”
Joey mentioned how not being in the playoffs last year really stunk, of course. Did that motivate the team at all this year? Did you see maybe that as kind of something that was pushing them all year of not wanting to be left out again? “Yeah, I think it’s a humbling experience. 2017 was a humbling experience for us. We had been very competitive. You know, if you looked at it, I felt like we were capable of making the Final Four, all ’14, ’15 and ’16. To not even make the playoffs in ’17 was pretty humbling, and I think it was something that allowed us to step back and say, what do we need to do differently. We’ve done things that have gotten us through the last three years, but how many of those things have changed with how this sport has evolved and the aero package has changed. I think the struggles of ’17 definitely allowed us to kind of sit down and say, okay, what can we look at doing differently and how do we need to focus forward on being successful this year, and I think that the frustration of the finish of ’17 motivated everybody here to figure out how we can have more speed in ’18 and execute better. I think we did that as a group. We lacked some speed in our cars through the summer, but we’ve definitely continued to work forward on how we could stay, and I feel like we’re competitive.”
