Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Southern 500 Media Availability | Darlington
Saturday, August 31, 2024
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Team Penske, met with media members Saturday morning ahead of on-track activity at Darlington Speedway Saturday. Logano spoke about the regular season finale and more.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse
THIS RACE WILL BE THE END OF THE REGULAR SEASON. NEXT WEEK WE’LL OFFICIALLY KICK OFF THE PLAYOFFS. YOU’VE BEEN IN THIS POSITION MANY TIMES. IF YOU DON’T MIND, JUST SHARE WITH US A LITTLE BIT OF HOW MUCH, YOU KNOW, THIS ENDS ONE PART OF THE SEASON AND NEXT WEEK STARTS ANOTHER PART FOR YOUR TEAM.
“Yeah, in a way it’s kind of a welcoming end of this part of the season as you look forward to the playoffs. Everyone is always excited about the playoffs. There’s so much opportunity to reach the ultimate goal, which is the championship. There’s 16 teams that have earned the right to be there. We’ll figure out the last one or two here this weekend obviously. It’ll be an exciting 10 weeks as it always is. There’s a lot of stories for you guys to talk about. Lord knows what they’ll be, but I’m sure there will be stories as there always is. It’ll be fun and interesting and hopefully at the end of the 10 weeks in Phoenix we’re celebrating.”
WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT THAT RUN BLANEY WENT ON LAST YEAR, WHICH CAME OUT OF NOWHERE, HOW DO YOU AND PAUL LOOK AT THOSE LAST TEN RACES AND SAY OKAY THIS MIGHT BE OUR CHANCE OR IS YOUR STRATEGY DIFFERENT?
“I don’t know if our strategy changes much. It kind of depends on what your position is as you go into the next race. What do you have to do to accomplish the ultimate goal, which is always getting to the next round first. How do we get to the next round? I think the strategy at this point is pretty apparent to most and it’s easy to say, hard to do. The first round has a lot of interesting racetracks in it, but a lot of times if you just have races without issue, you usually can get through that one. You know, it gets a little harder each time. And we’re not going in with a lot of playoff points like I’d like to have, but we have a few. There’s really not anyone that has a whole bunch more outside of the first few cars and obviously the 15 that the regular season champion will get. But yeah, it doesn’t mean that that’s a cakewalk for them either. We’ve seen that team get knocked out before, as well. So yeah, we just got to keep our heads down and dig and do our own thing, focus on what makes the 22 teamwork. We’ve gone on those runs before during the playoffs and it’s something that we’ve kind of become accustomed to for the most part at Team Penske. So hopefully we can bring a little bit more to the table and it seems like our cars are getting faster here recently, so I’m excited about that part. It seems like our cars are getting more and more competitive and we’re starting to peak at the right time. So it seems like it’s a little sooner than last year, which is good. I hope that’s the case. If you look at the 12 last year, it really wasn’t in the first round that they looked any better. It was really as they got to the second, the third round when it really started to show that their speed picked up and we were just too late. We were already knocked out at that point. So you just got to survive long enough to make sure the speed’s there if it matters.”
IN HIS THREE YEARS IN CUP SO FAR, HOW MUCH HAVE YOU SEEN HARRISON BURTON GROW AS A DRIVER AND DOES HE REMIND YOU OF YOUR EARLY DAYS?
“In some ways, yes and no. I definitely see some similarities there. I think everyone has said a lot of good things about Harrison this week, but I’d say, as a person probably what stands out the most to me about his character throughout the last three years. I get to witness it firsthand, not many people get to see that. I sit next to him on the airplane when we get done with every race, if we’re not driving like this weekend, but most of the time I sit next to him. There’s a lot of emotions after a race. Typically I have a hard time dealing with a lot of them, trying to get over it quickly. He always seems to have an upbeat attitude. It always impresses me. He’s happy. I’m sure it affects him. He just has a way of dealing with these things really, really well. He really lets that attitude go through his whole team. As a leader, it’s hard to do because you care so much and you get frustrated. It’s hard to keep a positive attitude on everything you do. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to that. But as a driver, your emotions, your reactions radiate through the whole team. He does an amazing job at staying positive and upbeat and keeping everybody ready for the next weekend. I think that’s why everyone was so excited to see him win last week. Not many times in my career can I say I was brought to tears of joy for watching someone else win. And actually seeing that last week and seeing Jeff in there with him, that was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in our sport.”
JOEY, STARTING THE PLAYOFF AT ATLANTA, IS THAT A START WITH A WILD CARD RACE? AND HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT TO KICK THINGS OFF?
“Yes, it is. I’m honestly not a huge fan of superspeedways in the playoffs. I get we got to have a variety of all the race tracks within our playoff schedule. I think one is plenty just because we know what speedway racing is. I mean, look at last week. I mean, just things could be going well and then everyone ends up in a wad. And you say look at the last 20 of them. Okay, they all look the same. Guys run up front, have a chance to win, all of a sudden they’re in the infield center and you guys are talking to us there. It just happens over and over and over again. So I don’t like that that can ruin someone’s championship run because of something someone else did. Look at our situation last week, there is nothing I could have done. If that is in the playoffs and that keeps you from winning a championship, that is pretty frustrating. You put your self in that position and you think abou that. I can’t think of anything I’d rather have done. I’m leaving the bottom lane with 7 or 8 to go. Where else would I rather be? I don’t really know how to handle that better and it will happen again when we go to Talladega. The same things are going to happen when we go to Atlanta possibly. Maybe not Atlanta as much as a wild card, but it still can be. We have seen some big wrecks there recently. So yeah, it is interesting.
YOU TALKED ABOUT THE VARIETY OF THE FIRST ROUND, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT THREE RACE PACKAGE TO BEING THE PLAYOFFS IN ROUND ONE?
“Bristol sounds like the one that is the most predictable but it is not now. If you guys remember last time we went there, tires wore out really fast and nothing’s gonna be different, so you gotta assume it’s gonna look the same with a lot of tire wear and when you think of it from that lens they’re all kind of wild cards to that first round. Watkins Glen is gonna be a lot different than what it was last time we were there with the rumble strips through the bus stop being different and you know it’s gonna take something different from your car, the tire sounds like it’s going to wear out there too. So a lot of unknowns and things that we’ll have to figure out as a team really fast with no practice essentially, limited amounts of practice where you can’t adjust anything to your car substantially to try to combat some of the things you may be fighting with a tire wear scenario at both Watkins Glen and Bristol. So I hope you make the right decisions before you get there and then try to figure out how to execute with it once you get there.”
HAVE YOU TALKED TO NASCAR AT ALL ABOUT CARS GETTING AIRBORNE THIS WEEK? HAVE YOU HEARD ANYTHING AND DO YOU HAVE ANY THOUGHTS OR THINGS THAT THEY CAN DO?
“I didn’t talk to them about it. I don’t really know what you do. To me, I don’t have an engineering degree, I just have an RCD. I would say that the floor underneath the car that we have a big pan, when it catches wind, it’s like a kite. And we’ve seen that happen a lot with this car. Until that comes off, I don’t think there’s a way to keep them on the ground. So I think one of the best options would probably be to put a splitter back on the thing and take the underbodies off and go back to where they were. Not that we had great success keeping the old car on the ground all the time, but gosh, it seems like we’ve seen more cars go up here recently than ever. So I got to think that that’s kind of the only thing you can do to fix it. You can’t put more weight in the car. That’s not going to be the answer. Then the wrecks would be bigger. So you don’t want to do that. So I think kind of the only option is to take that diffuser off.”
ONLY THREE TIMES IN THE PAST 15 YEARS HAS A CHAMPION BEEN THE WINNINGEST DRIVER OF THAT SEASON. THE OTHER 12 CHAMPIONS DID NOT WIN THE MOST RACES. DOES THAT SEEM ODD TO YOU? DO YOU THINK THE SYSTEM COULD BE TWEAKED OR CHANGED A LITTLE BIT TO REWARD WINNING MORE OR IS IT OKAY LIKE IT IS?
“I mean it already is really biased towards winning already. You think about the old, even the Chase back in the day or even before that, it’s about consistency as much as winning. Now, yeah consistency pays and for your reasons you said, but winning in the playoffs is a must. You have to win. So I think it’s already really biased towards winning more than ever. It’s kind of odd that it’s like that with such a long season though. I’d like to see how many championships have been won with the most wins in the 10-week span, right, in the last 10 weeks of the season. Because I would assume that the majority of the champions have the most wins in those last 10 weeks because you got to win one, right, you’re going to have to win Phoenix, right, for the most part, I mean it seems like all but one time, so most likely that. And you’re probably going to have to win another one throughout that to get to the next round maybe if your back is up against the wall. It is pretty biased toward winning in my opinion.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU AND YOUR TEAM HAVE INSTALLED A PRETTY GOOD PLAN HEADING INTO THE PLAYOFFS SINCE YOUR WIN? WHAT IS YOUR MINDSET HERE AT DARLINGTON? BECAUSE IT IS THE LAST RACE OF THE REGULAR SEASON, DO YOU STAY OUT OF THE FRAY BECAUSE IT CAN GET CRAZY AT THE END OR BECAUSE IT IS THE SOUTHERN 500, IS THAT THE GOAL?
“It is the Southern 500. This one is on the bucket list, man. This is the one you want to win. Darlington is a place you always want to win no matter what it is, but the Southern 500 adds a little bit to it. One of the three to four crown jewel events of the year. So yeah, you go for it. It doesn’t matter to me if it wasn’t the Southern 500, I’m still going out there to win. That’s our goal. So you’re in it, you’re out there going for it no matter what. So it doesn’t really change much, you know, considering it’s the playoffs next week and all that type of thing. You still race to win every week.”
THERE’S BEEN SOME TALK LATELY ABOUT THE RELATIVE DRIVING TALENTS OF GUYS LIKE KYLE LARSON, MAX VERSTAPPEN. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF A TOP NASCAR GUY WENT TO F1 OR A TOP F1 GUY CAME TO NASCAR? DO YOU THINK ONE WOULD DO BETTER THAN THE OTHER?
“I don’t know if I can answer that without doing it. The cars are so different and the racing is so different. It’s going to be one thing making speed and I think either one will eventually figure out how to make speed out of the car. But you look at the discipline of what F1 is, and the way they race, their strategy, and even the way they communicate is so different. The cars, the little nuances, the little things, so different than our cars. But then you think of, put them in the draft at Daytona, or put them at a restart here at Darlington and they’re racing so differently that it would take a long time to learn that. Outside of just making a car go fast and knowing how the car changes throughout a run and those type of things. It’s not that one’s more talented than the other. I’m sure there are amazing race car drivers in both series 100%, but they’ve been doing that for so long that it’s unfair to think that either one of us can switch and be competitive automatically. Like no way. On a road course it might be the closest for them to have a chance to be in the hunt, but you put one of them on an oval, they’re not going to have a clue what to do. That’s not a dig to F1 in any way, I’m just saying it’s so different that it would take years to try to convert. We’ve seen that. We’ve seen a few F1 guys try to convert into NASCAR drivers, and a few of them were successful, but it took a long time to do that. It wasn’t long. Juan Pablo, right, maybe the first one that comes to mind, it took him a while to become competitive in NASCAR and he’s an amazing talent, right? So, it’s just different. It’s what did you do growing up and what did you do for the last 15 years? Probably gonna be better at it.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY IT?
“I would try it, sure. Yeah, sign me up. Let’s go. I’d love to.”
IN TERMS OF TALKING ABOUT THE UPCOMING PLAYOFFS FOR THE CHANGES TO THE TRACKS, BUT ALSO THE TIRE CHANGES AND THINGS LIKE THAT. HOW MUCH IS LESS IN A DRIVER’S HAND OR IS IT PUTTING MORE IN A DRIVER’S HAND IN THESE PLAYOFFS WITH ALL THESE CHANGES?
“I don’t think it’s any different more or less. It’s not more or less, it is different though is what I guess I should say. Just because you have to be kind of ready for the unknown more than ever this year going into the playoffs. It’s just a lot of things that can happen that we can’t call yet. I feel like in the past, the playoffs were a little bit more predictable. But this first round is very unpredictable. I don’t know how it’s gonna work out. So you just gotta be quick and ready to adapt. Because we don’t really know exactly how the first three are really gonna play out. Especially outside of Atlanta, those other two, you really have no idea how they’re going to play out. You just got to be ready.”
LAST WEEK, THE END OF THE RACE, WE SAW A SITUATION WHERE A REALLY YOUNG DRIVER IN A DIFFERENT MANUFACTURER PUSHES ANOTHER MANUFACTURER TO THE VICTORY. AS A VETERAN, IS THERE ADVICE YOU WOULD GIVE TO SOMEBODY LIKE THAT WHO HAS GONE THROUGH A SITUATION, A VERY UNIQUE SITUATION AND KIND OF FACING SOME DIFFERENT QUESTIONS?
“I’m too far removed from that organization to know what they talk about, right? Like, did they have a pre-race meeting? Did they specifically talk about that stuff? Like coming to the end of a race, is that how that works over there? I don’t know, I just know how Ford works out things. I don’t know what, there are a couple of people back there that maybe can answer it, but they’re looking at me like, say the right thing, I don’t know what you guys do over there, okay, I don’t know what you guys do. What do we do behind closed doors, it’s your deal, man. But for us, we try to talk about as many things as possible, but you just never can call exactly how these races are going to play out. I don’t know if he was put in a tough spot or not, but obviously, there are questions afterward. You have to talk to him, I can’t really speak to it.”
NEXT YEAR’S SCHEDULE CAME OUT THIS WEEK, NOW WITH MORE TRACKS IN NORTH CAROLINA, INCLUDING ROCKINGHAM. DO YOU THINK THE SCHEDULE DOES A GOOD JOB OF APPEALING TO MORE TRADITIONAL FANS, OR IS THERE ANY WAY YOU’D LIKE TO SEE THE SERIES GO IN THE FUTURE?
“Well, when you think of the racetracks that we’ve resurrected here recently, North Wilkesboro, Rockingham now and Bowman Gray next year. It is cool. I think the Truck Series is perfect for that. You can think about when the Truck Series started or even the Xfinity Series, right? They raced at Hickory and they raced at some of these really old, cool tracks. I think it’s neat that they can bring those tracks back to life. I mean, Rockingham is awesome. It’s one of the best race tracks we’ve ever had. I’ve always enjoyed racing there. So, it definitely looks like a fun event and anything we can do to bring those tracks back and not let them just grow weeds through them anymore. I mean, that’s the cool part.”
THE TRUCKS ARE GOING TO GO TO LIME ROCK PARK NEXT YEAR. AS A CONNECTICUT NATIVE, IS IT COOL TO SEE THAT ON THE SCHEDULE AND WOULD YOU CONSIDER RUNNING THERE?
“I’d like to. I think it would be cool to race in Connecticut. I don’t even know where it lines up to where the Cup stuff is. I didn’t go over to schedule that great. But yeah, outside of me running it, it’s awesome that NASCAR is going back to Connecticut and even at the Truck level. I mean, there’s a lot of race fans up there. I grew up there and I remember going to so many different garages and there’s always NASCAR calendars and NASCAR memorabilia of some sort. Modified racing up there is huge. There are a ton of race fans in New England that I feel like get overlooked a lot because our sport sometimes is looked at as a Southeastern sport but it’s so nationwide at this point and New England has some die-hard race fans. It’s cool to have some more racing up there for them for sure.”
