Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
EVENT: Blue-Emu 500 Media Availability
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang, is one of three Ford drivers with two victories this season (Las Vegas and Phoenix). Logano, who has one series victory at Martinsville Speedway in 2018, goes into tomorrow night’s race second in the point standings. He held a Q&A session this afternoon to talk about the race and other issues.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – WILL THIS MARTINSVILLE RACE BE MORE COMPETITIVE THAN LAST YEAR WITH THIS NEW PACKAGE? “I think it’s not necessarily gonna be because we’re under the lights that’s gonna produce better racing, it’s the rules package that’s gonna produce better racing. The lower downforce with this big horsepower, and we talk about dirty air all the time and you say, ‘How can there be dirty air when they’re going 50 miles an hour in the center of the corner at Martinsville?’ Oh yeah, there’s dirty air, quite a bit of it. With this lower spoiler you can loosen cars up from being behind. The trailing car isn’t at as big of a disadvantage, where in the past year when you had that big spoiler on the car, being in the lead you have more downforce, you don’t have to use your brakes as much because you have more drag. It just snowballs and is an advantage for the leader to where you get up front, one thing after another just keeps getting better and better for you. Your brakes are cooler and your air-pressures come up less. Your car is handling better. You’re not slipping your tires as much. It’s a huge advantage, whereas now we lessen the advantage for the leader by taking downforce and drag off the cars on short tracks.”
BUBBA WALLACE SAID THE HE FEELS THE CONFEDERATE FLAG SHOULD BE BANNED BY NASCAR. DO YOU AGREE WITH HIM? “I think from my standpoint, and I’m probably not educated enough from any standpoint to speak much on anything, but as I’m trying to learn more, probably like a lot of Americans are right now is just trying to understand everything, I’m not someone that’s waved the Confederate flag in the past in any way. I’m someone that waves the American flag and I wave it proudly and I’ll continue to do that. That’s the only flag I wave, so why anyone waves the Confederate flag I have no idea. Like I said, I’m not educated in that department at all, so, like I said, I’m part of the United States. I’m a proud citizen of that and proud to fly the American flag for the men and women that have fought for my freedom, the people that I don’t even know have fought for my freedom. I can obviously appreciate that as does everybody else in America probably as well.”
DO YOU PLAN TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHY SOME PEOPLE CHOOSE TO FLY THE CONFEDERATE FLAG? “I think it’s probably smart for me to, but everybody has a different opinion, right? Opinions are like butt holes. Everyone’s got one and most of them stink, so I think at this point you do what you know is right and I know, like I said, I’m a proud citizen of this country and I wave the one with the stars and the stripes and that’s the one that I know the most about, and, like I said, the one that I know people fought for.”
HOW DO YOU APPROACH THESE RACES WITH NO PRACTICE? “It’s tough because working with Paul Wolfe now we have a new team and there’s been some challenges without practice, no doubt. Yes, we’ve had some good runs of late and have been really close to winning at Bristol and had a good car at Atlanta, but had some issues there. Preparing for the race it’s kind of like, ‘Well, what did you fight last year?’ ‘Well, I fought being loose here or tight here.’ ‘What did you fight?’ We had two different races going on. We had two different setups, so just trying to collaborate and put two and two together for an overall setup to start, and then when the race starts you hope you’re close and, if not, the communication between the driver and the crew chief during the race has been a little bit challenging of how far do we go? Is the track gonna change and go tighter because it’s rubbering up or looser or the sun is going down and which direction is it gonna go? We don’t have any practice notes to go off of. What’s gonna happen when we’re in dirty air compared to clean air? I don’t know. We didn’t have practice, and so that’s been a challenge for all the race teams, but I think also as a new race team working together it’s been a little bit extra challenging, but I feel like we’ve been able to overcome a lot already and also still have, I feel like, a lot of runway ahead of us to get even stronger. So I feel good about where we’re at. We’ve had some ups-and-downs throughout the races themselves, but I think overall we’ve had pretty good speed, so it’s tough without practice. You look at the way speeding penalties are lately. Boy, everyone is getting speeding penalties a lot lately, including myself, and a lot of that is due to no practice, so there’s just a lot of challenges right now that we’re trying to overcome.”
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE MARTINSVILLE TO SOMEONE WHO HAS NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE? “Take a 3400-pound race car with 750 horsepower and make a half-mile circle at your local grocery store parking lot, and try to do that as fast as you can 500 times. That’s Martinsville. Nobody knows what that is like because it’s not legal to do what I just explained, so it’s a tough place because to make speed on the short run compared to the long run, or channeling your aggression with patience is tough. Making a fast lap one lap is one thing. Making a fast lap 50 laps into a run is another thing. Getting frustrated during the race because you can’t get by somebody or the bumping and banging and keeping your fenders on. There are so many different aspects of winning at Martinsville, which makes it fun, but really, really hard to make it all come together. I enjoy the challenge. I absolutely love it. It’s a fun race track to go to. I’ve come out of there with a big smile on my face and I’ve come out of there wanting to beat someone up, but it’s one of those places that you’re gonna have memories, that’s for sure. Good or bad, you’re gonna remember your races at Martinsville.”
WHAT’S THE MOST FRUSTRATED YOU’VE GOTTEN AT MARTINSVILLE? “I’ll let you know Wednesday. I think what ends up happening is at the end of the races everyone starts picking it up a notch. To me, my all-time frustrating moment it’s hard not to say when I got wrecked into one a few years back as the leader. Obviously, that’s gonna take the cake when it comes to frustrating moments, but being able to win there means as much as anything. It’s definitely one of those race tracks that as a NASCAR driver you want to have a win at. To me, maybe it’s not Daytona or Indy, but, to me, it’s right in the wheelhouse with Charlotte and Darlington, a road course. You want to have on your stats that you clicked off a win at Martinsville because everyone knows how hard that is to say you’ve been able to accomplish. Everyone wants to have that Martinsville clock ringing in the morning every hour when you hear that thing going off in your house. That’s a sweet sound. That’s how you know you’ve been able to win there. It’s not an easy one to get.”
WHAT HAS THE EXPERIENCE BEEN LIKE BEING THE FIRST PROFESSIONAL SPORT BACK IN ACTION AND HOW HAS IT BEEN NOT HAVING FANS IN THE STANDS? “We miss them. Trust me, we really miss our fans, but, at the same time, we’re with our fans. Before the races start and you’re on pit road and you don’t have any fans around you, you can’t hear any cheering or booing from driver’s intros, or everyone getting all fired up before they say ‘drivers start your engines.’ We don’t have that part, but when the race starts, the race starts and you’re kind of in the zone and you don’t notice it. But when you get out of the car again at the end of the race it’s just quiet. It’s just an interesting feeling, and then you go back and you look at the impact we’ve made, whether it’s on social media or just looking at the ratings from what our races have been able to produce and you say, ‘Boy, there are a lot of fans watching us. This is great. It’s going really, really well.’ So your perspective is different sometimes when you don’t see them physically, but when you realize later on that we’re racing in front of what is the biggest crowd that we’ve raced in front of in a while makes you think that, ‘Boy, this is really great’ and we’ve taken this opportunity in front of us and really taken advantage of it, which as a sport I couldn’t be more proud of being in the meetings listening to all the team leaders and other drivers finding ways to do this and get back to the race track as soon as possible in the safest way. That being the biggest priority is doing this safely and what protocols need to be put in place and everyone working together. That was amazing to see because you’re talking about race teams and people that want to win every week and will do whatever it takes to beat the person next to them, and in this case we all came together and said, ‘Let’s just get back to the race track so we can race and then we’ll worry about kicking each other’s butt.’ It’s been an interesting few months leading up to what we’ve been able to accomplish the last few weeks and that’s just because of great collaboration throughout our sport and that’s all starting with the leaders at NASCAR. They’re the ones that put all of us together to come up with ways to make this work.”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE COMPETITIVE BALANCE BETWEEN MANUFACTURERS? “I think if you look at just kind of where things are at right now, you’re fairly equal. I’d say Chevy’s new body has really brought them into the game to where you look at Ganassi and Hendrick, especially on the 550 race tracks, I’d say they’re stronger than anybody from the speed perspective, and then also on the long run deal. If you look at the average of the races, if you look at California or Darlington, some of the speed those cars had. Putting the race together for them has been their challenge, but if you look at raw speed, they’re there and they’re stronger than probably all of us right now. There’s always a rabbit to chase and that’s kind of the rabbit out there right now for us, but I feel like we’re close and I feel like on these 750 races the Fords and Team Penske in particular has been strong. You look at Bristol, we had a good car and we almost won and then Brad was able to sneak by and get that win. Phoenix, we were able to win, so Martinsville this week I hope to be in the running. I expect to be, so it seems like different packages are kind of playing into different manufacturers and different teams wheelhouses for them, but it just seems like everyone is fairly close right now and it’s just putting it all together.”
HOW DIFFERENT WILL IT BE GOING TO HOMESTEAD WITHOUT A CHAMPIONSHIP ON THE LINE? “It’s gonna feel really weird. My whole career that’s always been the final race of the year and here in the last few years you’re either in the Championship 4 or you’re racing against the guys in it and it’s kind of been 50/50 for me in those scenarios. A lot of times the cream always rises to the top at that race track and you always saw those Championship 4 drivers finishing in the top four or right there at it, and one of them has always won the race. I wouldn’t expect some of that to be much different, but you know when you get down there and you’re not in the Championship 4 the effort that those other four cars have put into it has really kind of set themselves apart from the field a little bit, whereas now it might be a little bit more of an equal playing field when we get there. That will be interesting. Miami is not gonna change. It’s still gonna be tires wearing, good, hard racing, side-by-side, a little bit of draft into play as well. Your car is up by the wall, cars on the bottom, so it’s still gonna be a great race. It’s still gonna be Miami any way you look at it and it’s one of the best, if not the best race track we go to, so I don’t see any of that changing it’s just the environment is gonna feel a little bit different not being the final race of the year.”
