Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Bristol Night Race Media Availability | Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, September 20, 2024
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse, has already clinched a spot in the Round of 12 after winning the playoff opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Logano answered questions from the media today at Bristol Motor Speedway before qualifying for tomorrow night’s race.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT HAS LOCKING YOURSELF INTO THE ROUND OF 12 ALLOWED THE 22 TEAM TO DO AND PREPARE FOR THE REST OF THE PLAYOFFS? “To answer your question, it’s been nice to be able to think a little bit further forward for the next two races that were ahead of us, not that we discount these races any, but it does give you the advantage to look a little bit ahead – not like it does when you win in the Round of 8 and you have the opportunity to look for just one race. These races still matter. There’s still a long ways to go in the playoffs, but it’s more comfortable, I’ll say that. You sleep a little better at night, which is nice, but next week in Kansas we’re right back to where we were, so we’ve got to go make sure we score points again.”
IS THIS JUST WHO WE ARE NOW OR IS THERE AN EBB AND FLOW TO WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE TRACK NOW? WHAT HAPPENS NOW THAT EVERYONE AGREES WE MIGHT HAVE A PROBLEM? “I don’t really know. I think we know where the line is. We saw that a few weeks ago in Richmond. We know that’s too far. Outside of that, there’s gonna be bumping and banging and there’s gonna be some door-to-door, bumper-to-bumper, that’s gonna happen in NASCAR racing and the bottom line is our cars are stronger than they’ve ever been, for the most part. Outside of the really fragile parts, most of the parts are really, really tough. Even on superspeedways, the pushes and the bumps are tougher than ever because those type of bumps used to knock the nose in. Now they’re tougher. We used to not be able to even lay a fender on somebody because you’d cut a tire down or you’d knock your fender in and lose a ton of downforce. These cars aren’t like that anymore. Even the Xfinity cars, we’ve kind of seen this coming when they went to the composite body that those cars could hit the wall and keep on going most of the time. When you put that body on Cup car, you’re gonna see the same thing and when you also make all the cars the same, like they’re all close enough to where they run almost the same speed and everyone knows that if you want to move through the field, it’s gonna have to be on restarts and everyone gets more and more aggressive in those moments because they know that’s the opportunity to move through the field if you’re gonna do it. That’s why I think we’re all fighting for tire fall off because it opens up the opportunity for cars to be different speeds, and ultimately be able to race more and be able to pass more than just in the first five laps of a run, so you have a little bit more separation throughout the field. I think some of it is the product of the environment that you’re in sometimes and the race car that we have.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO DUPLICATE WHAT YOU DID IN ROUND ONE, NOT HAVING TO ROLL INTO THOSE RACES IN ROUND TWO WITH ANY PRESSURE TO MAKE SOMETHING BIG HAPPEN? “In each round it’s harder to move onto the next round. They’re taking less cars, so each round a win means more the previous round. The nice part about winning in any round, but in the first round particular, is that you have five playoff points that continue with us into the next round, so those are nice, which you can argue means as much as the win sometimes when you’re going through this next couple rounds. If you could win at Kansas, yeah, you’re gonna feel fantastic. Somebody will and will feel great. Hopefully, it’s us. Outside of that, you’ve got to try to score points because you look at Watkins Glen last weekend and the day a lot of playoff drivers had. It’s pretty wild out there. We talked a minute ago about how close everybody is on speed. The cars that aren’t in the playoffs are still really good and can win as well, so it’s just a different ball game than what we had a couple years ago with the old car.”
DO YOU FEEL YOU ARE IN BETTER PLAYOFF SHAPE THAN YOU’VE BEEN AT TIMES WHEN YOU ACTUALLY COME INTO A PLAYOFF AND WON THE TITLE? “Yeah, I think in both of our titles we haven’t had the most playoff points or really a great regular season leading into it. The playoffs have gone really well for us. There are multiple reasons that go into that, but there have been times that we’ve come into the playoffs with a ton of playoff points and didn’t make it to the Championship 4. I guess it just kind of depends on what the 10 weeks looks like and what each three-week little season looks like. That’s really the most important part is you’ve just got to stay alive and stay in the game three weeks at a time.”
HARRISON BURTON IS GOING TO AM RACING NEXT YEAR. WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN FROM THAT ORGANIZATION AS THEY TRY TO BUILD AND WILL IT BE BENEFICIAL TO HAVE A CUP GUY COMING IN? “I think it will be good for both of them. It’s good for Harrison. It’s good for AM to have each other. There’s so much potential in that race team and they really just need consistency. That was the biggest thing I took out of the whole thing. When you’re switching to a different driver every week, and it’s not their fault, but some drivers have zero experience and some have a lot of experience, but the ones that have none can’t guide the team into the right things. If you haven’t really raced an Xfinity car many times, you don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like, so you can’t tell them what’s wrong. In return, the team can’t get any better because they don’t know what’s wrong because the driver’s not telling them, so they need some consistency. Harrison will definitely be great for that. He definitely has a lot of experience winning Xfinity races and running in the Cup Series for a few years. It’s amazing what just a year or two of Cup racing will do for you. When you go back to Xfinity after running Cup and you see the level of not only the drivers but the people that are in the Cup level, it’s night and day different. And when you’re able to take some of that experience of like, ‘I’ve seen the other side’ and bring that to a team like AM, it’s a huge value for them. I think it’s a great win for the both of them. I wish them the best of luck. Now I’ve got some relationships over there, so you want to see then do good and I think they will. I also think there will be a learning curve and some bugs that have to get worked out first, but there’s a lot of potential there. The car can run in the top 10. Every time I’ve been in it it can do that, but it’s just getting the little stuff worked out.”
IS THE TIRE SITUATION STRESSFUL TO YOU OR JUST ANOTHER VARIABLE BECAUSE NOBODY IS SURE WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO DO TOMORROW NIGHT? “Not as stressful for me as it is for others (laughing). It’s a huge variable. It might be the biggest one. We’re not 100 percent sure and we’re gonna see here in a few minutes when practice starts and we get out there and we start running a few laps and say, ‘OK, what was it? Was it the tires, the track temperature, the resin?’ What is it. Will it repeat? I think it will. My take is I think it will. I don’t know if everyone is voting on what we think. We should all put a vote in to see who’s right, but I think it will fall off hard again, but there’s no way to be 100 percent certain that that’s what it’s gonna be until we get out there. But I think we’ll know in practice what the race will look like this time. Last time in the spring, we saw that in practice and everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, but the track will rubber up and it will get better. Wear will go down and the pace will go down,’ and then it didn’t. It stayed the whole time. Now, the teams will be more aware of it. I’m sure a lot of teams probably made some changes to their cars from last time. That will help that. I thought it was great last time. It’s entertaining to watch, just watching the race back. There was so much going on, almost too much going on to where you can’t actually keep up with it all, but it definitely threw quite the old slider on us that we weren’t ready to see. This time, everyone will be more prepared.”
IS THE EXPECTATION THE SAME FOR THE ROUND OF 12 WITH THE WILD CARD RACES IN THAT ROUND? “I think it’s the most wild cards we’ve ever had in the playoffs – ever as far as racetracks that we’re just not certain of. Kansas, we talk about Kansas and there are a lot of crazy things that happen at Kansas, too. When you look at those restarts when you’re four and five-wide, you’re gonna tell me that’s a calm situation? That’s the most calm race that we have in the next round? Are you kidding me? And then you look at this round. Watkins Glen was really supposed to be the most predictable race of the three. I mean, I don’t think we’ve had a playoff schedule that’s looked like this ever before. I absolutely expect more of the same. Like I said, it’s a lot about survival – survive and move on and get to the Round of 8 and figure it out from there.”
DO YOU HAVE MORE FLEXIBILITY TO GAMBLE AND TRY TO DO SOMETHING CRAZY TO WIN THE RACE IF YOU NEED TO? “Yeah. That’s the position we’re in. That’s what we’re going for this weekend. We tried that last weekend in Watkins Glen. It was either stage win, race win – that’s all that mattered. We were in position to do that if that caution didn’t come out coming to the end of the second stage. We were pretty certain that Ross and Shane were gonna pit there and we would have won that stage and we would have been as happy as could be with a playoff point leaving there, and that caution came out maybe six seconds too soon. We lost all our track position for basically nothing at that point and took our chance to win away, but that’s just the cards that were played. Sometimes they just don’t fall in your favor and that’s kind of what happened last week, but this week is the same thing. You’ve got to be able to go out there and if we can win, great. It’s the Bristol Night Race. Everybody wants to win this race. This is a big one, but if we go win a stage and put ourselves off strategy to do that or whatever it may be, we may look at that opportunity maybe a little bit more so than if we were just racing for points.”
WHAT IS IT LIKE BEING UPSIDE-DOWN IN A RACE CAR AND WHAT IS THE FEELING WHEN YOU SEE SOMEONE ELSE GOING THROUGH THAT? “What it’s like, it’s honestly the scariest part about being in a car because it’s the time where you literally have zero control of your car. There are other times where you may be wrecking, but you can at least steer it or do something. It’s kind of like if the throttle sticks. There’s only so much you can do. It’s like the scariest thing because you’re along for the ride. Well, once the tires leave the ground, there’s no input that you can make to make a difference. You’re along for the ride and that’s not a comfortable feeling. It’s kind of hard to put into words. Most people will never understand what that feels like or can even imagine what that’s like, and that’s why it’s hard to put into words. You know that this might hurt or maybe worse, but there’s nothing you can do about it so you’re just strapped in and holding on, so when you watch somebody else go through a traumatic experience like that, the human side of you is obviously concerned for them and you just want to know if they’re OK or not as quickly as possible. That’s really what you want to know. You hope that they are and then you move on and you go racing again. It’s just what we have to do. That’s the part that probably makes us a little bit crazy and different than most people is that we watch that and know what it’s like and you say, ‘OK, let’s go. Let’s go again.’ That’s just what racers do.”
WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN FROM AUSTIN THESE LAST COUPLE OF WEEKS AND MONTHS LEADING UP TO THIS POINT WITH HIM AND THE 2 TEAM? “I wouldn’t say it’s surprising. When you look at especially those first two racetracks, those were right in his wheelhouse. Superspeedways, road courses, that’s Austin’s wheel house. Not that he can’t win anywhere else. We saw him win at Gateway, but I think if you look off of history and whether it’s Xfinity or Cup, wherever it may be, those type of racetracks are what fits him and that team. I’m not surprised to see that many points scored from them. Hopefully, we can keep all the Penske cars in when we leave here tomorrow night and be able to fight again next week and try to keep them all in all the way to the end.”
Chris Buescher, driver of the No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is coming off his first win of the season last week at Watkins Glen International. He stopped by the infield media center at Bristol Motor Speedway and talked about his week and expectations for Saturday night’s race.
CHRIS BUESCHER, No. 17 Fastenal Ford Mustang Dark Horse – IS THERE LESS PRESSURE TRYING TO WIN RACES WITHOUT BEING IN THE PLAYOFFS? “To be clear, we’ll take a win at any point in the season and in the moment part of me cared that it was past the playoff cutoff line. But as you sit there and think about it and know that we were able to win that race and know that we’ve got a lot of good ones coming up, obviously I wish things would have played out better earlier in the year and we would have been able to be in the playoffs knowing what that win would have done for a round for us. That being said, we go to the racetrack to win races no matter the situation. I don’t know that it changes the pressure on the weekend, but it does take the mindset of having to chase three or four stage points here or there in a race and ultimately set us up for a strategy that puts us in the best scenario to win a race versus trying to hunt those couple points along the way. I think that’s the bigger difference. It’s not necessarily how we approach the weekend and any of the effort that’s put into it or any of the prep work, that all stays the same. It’s just a little different on how you can play some strategy calls and maybe take a little bit more of a chance throughout a race.”
WHEN YOU LOOK BACK AT KANSAS AND THE WAY THAT ENDED, WHAT DO YOU THINK? “I think about 100 different things that could have created a thousandth of a second (laughing). Trust me, that one has been replayed a lot and will continue to be no matter what. You go there and win next week and you’re still gonna say, ‘Man, we lost a chance at another one months back.’ The same way coming to Bristol. Every time I show up at this place I think about leading on a green-white-checker in an Xfinity race and running out of fuel or having a fuel stumble. That was probably 10 years ago, nine or 10 years ago, and it’s still on my mind when we show up and walk down that tunnel. That one is never going away, but, to your point, when we go there it’s exciting to know that it’s another racetrack that we’ve had circled for a long time as a fast racetrack for us, something that we’ve found a lot of speed and been good at and have the opportunity to capitalize on when we get there. There’s always gonna be some amount of looking back, but the good news is when we look back on it the high notes are the fact that we were even in the position to be able to win a race and how do we execute just ever so slightly different.”
ON THAT LAST LAP AT KANSAS, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT AND WISH YOU MIGHT HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? “It’s line decisions, knowing that if you would have gotten back to the throttle three inches earlier that it probably makes the difference. That’s an incredibly small number as well. I just think about all that. Being ready for the contact down the front straightaway. If I would have been more prepared for that, I wouldn’t have been caught off-guard and been sideways scrubbing speed out of it. A lot of different things in that moment that we’ll be more prepared for that next go-around.”
DO YOU FEEL RFK IS WHERE IS SHOULD BE NOW? “We’re not winning every week, so we’re not where we should be. Granted, that’s not a realistic expectation in our sport, but the chance to win every week or the opportunity, the speed, the ability to say if things would have played out in a little more favorable way. Don’t leave there saying that we didn’t execute to the best of our ability that we didn’t have the speed capable of winning a race. It’s a lot of different things. You’ll never win every one of them, but how do you at least feel like you had a shot given a couple things go your way and you’re able to do everything right from what you can control. We’re not there. It’s been a great year. It’s been a really good turn around for the last three seasons, but it needs a little bit more yet. That’s showcased by the fact that we weren’t able to win a race before the playoffs, that we don’t have more wins on the season. For us, this race will be stressful for the 6 bunch and Brad. It’s been a very good racetrack for RFK – for myself and for Brad – so I don’t think there’s a worry about not having speed when we come to this place, but needing to fully execute on everything that we can knowing how this spring race went, what do we predict this go-around and what does that actually look like. When we get into practice there are a lot of different things on the table that are on our minds because we’re not exactly where we want to be, but massive progress has been made and is continuing to be pushed towards a better standard each and every week still.”
DOES IT FEEL PARADOXICAL THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO GO FOR THE WIN LAST WEEK WHILE MANY OF THE PLAYOFF DRIVERS HAD TO POINTS RACE? “Yeah, when you put it that way. It’s certainly interesting to think about and I talked a lot probably six weeks ago or eight weeks ago – through that stretch – we’ve been kind of living on a bubble for that playoff spot for a long time, and knowing that we were gonna need a win most likely. We did a good job at putting ourselves in a good spot and recovering from three accidents in the last three weeks and gaining a ton of points on those that we thought we were racing and a couple new winners got us, but that being said, I talked a lot about the fact that I think that points racing does take away your best effort when you go to the racetrack. I did not want to get stuck in that mindset as we got into those last couple of months that we were going to the racetrack just to try to grab stage points and finish decently. I don’t want to do that. The system can lead you down that road if you’re not careful and it can work. Obviously, the most secure way to do it is to win, so, yes, it is weighted toward going out there and just winning a race, but it’s easy as you get down to the wire to know that you are close on the points side of things with half a dozen other drivers that you’ve got to be aware of it. You can’t be out there making insane calls or massive risk taking, but at the same time could that have worked out? Maybe. Really, I think about the last three weeks and we were in an accident every one of those weeks and we were in an accident because we were making strategy calls to try and figure out how to win a race and not to try to capitalize on two or three points here or there.”
