Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Phoenix 1 Media Availability | Friday, March 7, 2025
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Team Penske, returned to the site of his 2024 NASCAR Cup Series championship clinching run, Phoenix Raceway and met with media members ahead of on-track action this weekend.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Hunt Brothers Pizza Ford Mustang Dark Horse — YOU HAD A PRETTY SUCCESSFUL OUTING LAST TIME YOU WERE HERE. WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO COMING BACK HERE?
“Yeah, lots of good memories here. It is cool being back for sure. Even going out there earlier and seeing the wall with the sticker on it, because we won this thing last time. It’s a lot of special moments, but I’ve been saying it’s in the past, right? You gotta keep moving forward. I mean, it’s still fun to reminisce a little bit, but you gotta stay on the windshield.”
YOU’RE GOING WITH THE OPTION OF THE SOFTER TIRE. ARE YOU GUYS, SINCE YOU WON THIS RACE BACK IN NOVEMBER ON THE PRIMARY, LIKE, PLEASE DON’T CHANGE THIS AT ALL?
“Not really, actually. Because I think for the better of the sport, I think what we’ve been doing with the tires has been a really big gain lately. Last week you saw a lot of fall off there, it was just great. And the way we’re introducing it is a pretty safe way to do it. We did this at Richmond and I think it’s cool. I kind of like the option thing. I don’t know, it’s kind of hit or miss for competitors and maybe even fans, whether they like it or not. I think some people see it as possibly gimmicky, but I don’t see it that way at all. I see that everyone has the same amount of tires and it’s how you want to call the race. But I do think it’s better for the sport to have, you know, if this tire, it’s going to work. And they can implement it in more places and keep doing this. I think it’s great. It’s cool.”
I’M FULLY AWARE I’M ASKING YOU ABOUT YOUR TEAMMATE, AUSTIN, BUT NASCAR SAID THEY DIDN’T SUSPEND HIM BECAUSE THEY FELT LIKE THE RETALIATION WAS AT A SLOWER SPEED AND THE OTHER VEHICLE WAS ABLE TO CONTINUE IN THE RACE. ARE YOU GOOD WITH THAT PHILOSOPHY ON RETALIATION?
“I think all of us just go and look back and say, okay, what is acceptable and what is not, and how are things called. It is case by case, that is what they say. Now we know what that means. It is one thing to be written in the rule book and a lot of time it is hard to understand it because it is a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo in there, but when they make a call on something and it’s this way you expect okay next time it should look like that if it’s a similar scenario. So I guess it’s case by case.”
DO YOU THINK NASCAR DRIVERS GET ENOUGH CREDIT FOR BEING ATHLETES?
“Yeah, the fact that they even ask us is a little ridiculous, in my opinion. It’s how you want to define an athlete. In the same way that if you give me a basketball, I’m not going to be that great with it, it’s the same way you put an NBA player in a NASCAR race car, and they’re not going to be that great either. So are you going to tell me now an NBA player is not an athlete because he can’t drive a race car? Probably not. So then why would you call me not an athlete? Why would you even be in the conversation? I just don’t, I don’t get that. I think when people are competing at a high level, at the very top with the amount of pressure that we all deal with, and not to mention that obviously the physical strains that it takes to drive these race cars these days. We’re in for a long period of time and tough conditions. It’s kind of hard to say we’re not, but it’s an uneducated question from people that don’t understand our sport is what it is.”
WHAT KIND OF WORKOUTS DO YOU DO TO STAY IN TOP FORM? ARE YOU LIKE A CROSSFIT GUY OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT?
“I’m not a CrossFitter. Everybody’s probably a little bit different and my workouts have changed as I get older and different things start feeling different ways. I think I started thinking about the mobility a little bit more and making sure my hips work a little bit more. But outside of that, I run a fair amount. I try to do a lot of stuff outside. I lift some as well, but everything’s high reps because we don’t want to be that big and bulky inside a race car. You gotta be able to do some for a long time, right? Endurance is a huge thing, so you know, keeping your heart rate elevated for a long period of time seems to be something that’s comparable to what’s in the race car. So heat and elevated heart rate for a long period of time is probably the best way to train.”
DO YOU EXPECT THE OPTION TIRE TO BEHAVE A CERTAIN WAY THIS WEEKEND, OR MAYBE DIFFERENT FROM RICHMOND, SINCE IT’LL BE A DAY RACE AND THE TRACK WILL BE A LITTLE BIT HOTTER COMPARED TO RICHMOND AT NIGHT?
“You know as much as me. We have a few educated guesses on the way we think things are going to go, but we won’t know for sure until we get on the racetrack with it. Nobody knows how much faster it’s truly going to be. Is it going to be a couple tenths? Is it going to be a half a second? Is it gonna last? Is it going to be a half second quicker for 10 laps and then neutral out? We don’t know until we go out there and run a longer run to really understand that. So it makes practice tomorrow really interesting for everybody, right? For everyone who wants to see what these tires are going to be worth. And then you can start to dictate your strategy off of that. But you really can’t until you get out there on the racetrack.”
IT WAS ONLY FOUR MONTHS AGO THAT YOU WERE SITTING RIGHT HERE AND PENSKE CARS WERE DOMINANT. BUT EVEN A YEAR AGO IT WAS BELL WHO WAS 20TH ON THE LAST PIT STOP, DROVE ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE FIELD, WON BY 5 SECONDS. SO WE’VE SEEN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPRING AND FALL. WHAT ARE SOME FACTORS HERE THAT COULD CHANGE THINGS UP? I MEAN OBVIOUSLY THERE’S AN OPTION TIRE, BUT COULD TEAMS HAVE MADE THAT MANY GAINS IN THE SIMULATOR IN THE OFF-SEASON? OR WHY WOULD THINGS BE DIFFERENT?
“You know how racing is, there’s a million different variables out there that are always floating around. What do teams do over the off-season to find just overall gains, right? This will be a good measure to see, did we work hard enough over the off-season or did everyone else catch us? This would be a good way of knowing that. You brought up the tire, that’s going to be a unique thing, so we will have to overcome that and try to figure that challenge out. There’s a lot of little things that can stack in. I wouldn’t expect this one to be as much of a change as, you know, a lot of times from Phoenix 1 to Phoenix 2 is a larger change because you’ve gone through so many more races in between, you learned more things and there’s just as equal of a chance that if we raced here last November and we came back a week later, the race would look different because everyone would have gone back and said, man, my car did this good, this good, and this not so well. And they would try to fix the not so well part and probably be pretty damn competitive. So we got to kind of look at it the same way. They all have the opportunity to go work on their stuff and they’re probably going to be better than they were last time. We have to do the same. So I think it can be different, yes. Hopefully it’s not.”
WHEN YOU SWITCH FROM PRIMARIES TO OPTIONS AND BACK TO PRIMARIES, WHAT’S THE IMPACT ON THE DRIVER? WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO DIFFERENTLY WITH EACH SET OF TIRES? WHAT ARE YOU DOING INSIDE THE CAR THAT WE DON’T HAVE A TRUE CONCEPT OR UNDERSTANDING OF WHEN YOU CHANGE TIRES LIKE THAT?
“There’s a lot of strategy to it. For one, you wonder what the balance is going to be from one set to another, which is something we’re planning on wanting to learn tomorrow in practice. But also knowing how hard you can push that tire before it falls off or if it will fall off. How long do you got the goody in it and what’s the penalty if you use it too soon? You kind of got to know that. That’s a pretty big strategy call from behind the wheel of how hard you’re going to push this thing. And obviously there’s a lot of strategy on when you put them on. That’s a given though and that’s kind of more of a crew chief and driver conversation together to figure out what the best timing is going to be. But from behind the wheel you got to know what you can and can’t do with this tire. It’s hard to talk about it right now because we don’t know, right? I mean it’s, it kind of makes it fun because we’re going to learn a lot tomorrow in a short amount of time and we may have even more questions by the tie we are done. But I think it’s definitely going to change the game a lot. And you have to be ready to adjust what you need to depending on what it does to the balance of the car.”
AFTER THIS WEEKEND, HOW WILL YOU LOOK AT IT IN THE SENSE OF MOST OF THE WEEKEND WE RUN ON A TIRE THAT FOR THE MOST PART PROBABLY ISN’T GOING TO BE RUN IN NOVEMBER. WHENEVER THIS WEEKEND’S OVER, WHOEVER WINS THIS RACE IS GOING TO BE CROWNED THE FAVORITE, BECAUSE THEY WON AT PHOENIX BUT MOST OF THE RACE WILL BE RUN ON A TIRE THAT PROBABLY WON’T BE RUN IN NOVEMBER. SO HOW WILL YOU DIGEST THIS WEEKEND AND NOT GET DISTRACTED BY WHAT HAPPENED WITH THIS ON THESE TIRES AND ON THE PRIMARY TIRES AND THINGS LIKE THAT.”
“You just have to do a good job taking notes afterwards of what did what, and make sure you know. Because we don’t know that this is going to be the tire coming back, right? In the same way, you can’t say whoever wins the race on Sunday is going to be the championship favorite when they come back here. I don’t remember what we ran in the spring last year, but it wasn’t pretty. I remember that. It was mid-pack. And we came back and were dominant when we came back. A year later, or a season later, obviously. So I don’t know if I’d call this winner here the dominant favorite to win the whole thing. There’s just too many things that can change. There’s just too much. It’s kind of hard. So we’ll just take the best notes we possibly can from everything.”
IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE A FAN OF THE OPTION TIRE BEING BROUGHT HERE, BUT DO YOU FEEL AS A COMPETITOR LIKE IT WAS NEEDED FOR THE RACING HERE OR IS IT CHALLENGING ENOUGH RACING AT PHOENIX?
“I think more tire fall-off is good and I think it’s good anywhere. This is something that drivers have been asking for for years, right? This car was supposed to be the opportunity to be able to do that, and now Goodyear’s feeling comfortable about being more aggressive. The drivers are asking for it, that is one thing we talk about. If the drivers are asking for it and Goodyear goes and builds a tire and it wears out too quick, you better not be complaining about it, because you’re the one that asked for it, right? That’s just the truth. I think all the drivers are behind that. They’re kind of like, hey, you know what, as long as it doesn’t blow out and we smack the wall, we’re not going to complain, right? If it wears out too quickly, that’s kind of what you asked for, right? You think of the Bristol spring race last year, right? A little extreme, but kind of what we asked for. I don’t think many people are going to complain about that. It was good. So this is a way to introduce that softer tire, or a tire that has more wear with less risk of maybe having that Bristol spring scenario where we can put it on and you can say, man, this added a fair amount, and cool. Look at last week, it was great. I don’t know if that race looks as good if we have a different tire on there. We’ve proven that the tire is the biggest knob to good racing. I think we’ve proven that. I think Goodyear understands that and they’ve done a great job at producing a tire that has that. Think about how hard is it for a tire company to do that. They want to build a tire to sell on the street, like their number one goal is to make money, right? Obviously, and you want tires on your street car to last forever and we’re asking for something completely different in a race car, and they’re willing to do that for us. I respect that. Because that’s kind of against what they would want to do, you would think. So for them to build this tire, I respect that. I give them a lot of kudos for that and I think that’s great for our sport.”
VEGAS, NEXT WEEK, IT’S BEEN PRETTY GOOD TO YOU OVER THE YEARS. WHAT MAKES YOU GUYS SO GOOD THERE? WHAT’S THE FAVORITE PART FOR YOU GOING INTO THAT WEEKEND?
“We say that’s a racetrack where it just takes everything to be good. You have to have a fast car, you have to be able to take the bumps good, you have to have good horsepower, you have to have good fuel mileage, you have to have the right strategy, and it is the Pennzoil 400, right? We drive in the Pennzoil car there. So you want to make sure you have a good run in there, a good show. I don’t see why we wouldn’t be good there. I’m looking forward to getting out there and seeing what we’ve got.”
IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THE DRIVERS GET TOGETHER AND THEY’RE LIKE, WHAT ELSE DO WE WANT FROM A CAR STANDPOINT THAT COULD BE BETTER.
“Well, listen when you put a group of drivers in a room you’re gonna get opinions. It’s just what it is. And some of them align on things, and some kind of vary in different ways. Not all the time is the full perspective there for anybody right? That’s why it’s important for the drivers, for NASCAR, for Goodyear, for sponsors, TV partners — it’s important for everyone to see everyone’s perspective on what it is. Because sometimes what’s best for what we think on the race track may not be the best for one of the other parties. The perspective is everything in life. And so for that reason, it’s kind of hard to say exactly what those things are, but there’s always some knobs on the race cars that people feel would make things better, but you have to be willing to almost start all over to do some of them. And I think that’s asking a lot at this point with this car.”
OVER THE NEXT MONTH WE’RE GOING TO GO TO A COUPLE OF TRACKS, HOMESTEAD AND DARLINGTON, WHERE RUNNING THE WALL IS TYPICALLY THE FASTEST WAY AROUND IN THOSE PLACES. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO RUN INCHES FROM THE WALL, LAP AFTER LAP, AND WHO DO YOU THINK IS THE BEST AT RUNNING THE WALL IN THE CUP SERIES RIGHT NOW?
“You should ask Kyle Larson. He’s really, really, really good at it. Reddick’s gotten really good at it. Blaney is decent at it too. It’s not comfortable, I can tell you that much right now. You’re on the ragged edge and you’re literally an inch off the wall. You are on it. So a mistake — you run into a corner a mile an hour too fast and boink, you’re in the wall. A car rolls up in front of you and gives you dirty air, you didn’t expect it, you were committed to being up there, boom, you’re in the fence. What’s changed now is those guys weren’t able to get away with it with the old car, because the old car, the steel body, the fenders would get knocked in, you’d get fender rub and it would be game over. You’d come in to pit, get a flat tire. That’s what happened there with Larson for years there. He’s always the fastest car and you know, just give it time, just give it time, and oh, all right, and then he’d get back up there. Now, he’s gotten really good at it, gotten even better at being consistent at it, but also you can make a mistake now as long as it’s small enough. You can just kind of smush it up against the wall every now and again and life’s okay as long as you don’t hit it that hard. We’ve seen those guys be able to get away with that and they’ve been pretty strong because of it.”
DO YOU SIT HERE MORE FRUSTRATED OR MORE ENCOURAGED BY THE SEASON BECAUSE YOU’VE OBVIOUSLY LED THE MOST LAPS OF ANYONE, YOU’VE BEEN SO STRONG IN ALL OF THE RACES BUT HAVEN’T GOTTEN THE TOP TENS OR EVEN THE VICTORIES. WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF?
“Just rolling with the punches like I typically do at this time of year. You go out there and you try to just maximize your day. Get out there and lead laps, score as many stage points as you can, get the best finish you possibly can. Last week was looking like it was actually pretty good where we get nice stage points. The first stage we got back up to like seventh there at the end before I got ran off the racetrack and then dumped all in one lap. That’s frustrating. I mean that’s probably the most frustrating thing that happened all year. Daytona is Daytona. You kind come to expect it a little bit there. It’s because everyone was racing for the 500, so that’s that. Atlanta was a little frustrating that we couldn’t get back up there and take control of the race again, but I’d say overall our team’s still in good shape. We’re doing well, like you said, we’re leading laps. Thank God we scored some stage points because the finishes haven’t been there yet, but you know, we’re still early in the year. This is the first normal race track we’ve gotten to so far. It’s hard to call those other ones normal tracks.”
