Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Food City 500 Media Availability
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse, has two career NASCAR Cup Series victories at Bristol Motor Speedway. The three-time champ visited the infield media center before today’s practice and qualifying to answer media questions, along with receiving the fourth quarter Pocono Spirit Award from the National Motorsports Press Association.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – COMMENTS AFTER RECEIVING THE AWARD FOR HIS FOUNDATION SUPPORTING VICTIMS OF HURRICANE HELENE IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA:
“This is obviously a real special thing because I think that storm impacted so many people in this area. I think everyone in this room probably knows somebody that lives in that area or visited that area or is from that area and you see some of the devastation that was up there, and I thought maybe the most special part about that is seeing everybody band together. I’ve always heard that – one of my quotes that I like to think about a lot is ‘Don’t let a crisis go to waste.’ A crisis like that presented a huge opportunity for all of us to band together and impact some people that just got their lives wiped out, whether it’s their homes or vehicles or their family. It’s some pretty heavy stuff up there and I’m sure a lot of you guys have seen it. The great news is there’s a lot of comeback up there and obviously they’ve been dealing with fires now as well, but it’s definitely been a tough road for everyone. I can’t take full credit for something like this. I’ve got a great group at the foundation that when I put a project together and say, ‘Hey, you want to go after this. Let’s go make a big impact. Let’s go help some people. We have the ability to do it. Let’s do it now while we can.’ So finding the right ways to do it, we did a good job with that and met a lot of great people and a lot of great relationships that will help us through the years moving forward in that area. For us, the Joey Logano Foundation is all about foster care and there’s a lot of families that you think about foster families, they have committed so much, such a selfless act to take on a kid that’s been put through the ringer to say the least and then their life gets wiped out by a storm of nothing they can do about it. It was pretty special to deliver some cars back up there. That was a fun one and make some repairs as well to people’s homes. Places that we love working with already had a lot of damage, so being able to work with them some more too was really nice, so, like I said, we committed $250,000 and as soon as we committed that and started doing things, another $300,000 or so rolled in and we ended up giving way over half a million dollars to that area. That just goes to show that once you start doing it and you start telling everyone what it’s all about, there’s a lot of great people in our industry, whether it’s in this room or fans or sponsors that wanted to jump on board and help too. That was really cool.”
HOW SPECIAL IS THIS PLACE? “I feel like everyone should know that answer when they walk into this place. I feel like it’s all written right on its face. When you walk in I like to cross over the track instead of going through the tunnel because you get the full experience and it’s the wow factor, it’s the badass factor of what this place is. I think that’s what stands out, whether it’s the fans all the way around here. It’s the Last Great Colisseum, that’s what it is and then obviously the racing it puts on, it puts on great racing. Last night, the Truck race was a pretty good race to watch, lots of interesting things happening, whether it’s strategy or moving around the racetrack. I just think it’s always put on a pretty cool race.”
HOW ARE YOU FEELING AFTER DARLINGTON. YOU HAD TO GO TO THE CARE CENTER AND GET FLUIDS. “I had the stomach virus and I thought I was good, and then right before the race I realized that I was not good. I was able to get through the race, but was pretty dehydrated afterwards because for one I was throwing up and all throughout the week and then just couldn’t keep any fluids in even during the week. It was not a fun experience, but I saw the end of it. It was a long race.”
NASCAR HAS NOT RE-APPLIED THE PJ1 AFTER THE RAIN AND IT’S COOL. SO WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT WITH THOSE FACTORS? “It’s always interesting to watch these races as the weekend goes here because you don’t know exactly how it reacts. There are so many variables to PJ1, how it’s applied, what the temperature is gonna be like, how the rubber is gonna lay down. I mean, we’re one year anniversary from that crazy moment last year when everyone’s tires were wearing out in 30 laps. We don’t know that’s not gonna happen today. There’s no certainty of that as the temperatures are pretty cool, so I think we’re all curious to see what that’s gonna be like and we’ll watch the races. Last night, the top started to come in late in the run. You saw a few trucks be able to go up there and make something happen, not many, but as the Xfinity race runs today it may rubber up a lot down there, maybe it will lose a little bit of its grip. I know tomorrow it seems like it’s a question at the moment whether they’re gonna re-apply it or not, so we’ll see tonight.”
HOW DO YOU PREPARE FOR A RACETRACK AND A RACE WHEN YOU KNOW A TRACTION COMPOUND IS GOING TO BE APPLIED? “It’s harder because it’s a moving target. The question is like, ‘Is the track gonna apply more?’ That’s the first thing you want to ask and then, ‘What’s that gonna do? How long will it matter?’ If they re-apply, the bottom is gonna be super dominant to start the race, but at some point it’s gonna rubber up, get chunky, what’s that gonna do to your car? Are you still gonna be able to make it work down there? What do you need in your car to be able to make that happen? And then, if you can’t, then what does the top look like? You’re gonna need something different for the top to work versus the bottom to work. There’s been times in the years, and it hasn’t been recently, but it used to really over-rubber the top as well and it would get clumped up there, so there would be three or four different stages of Bristol and it was tough, and it still is today of understanding what do you need at what point in the race. It’s very different if you run 100-lap green flag run and then you stack it up with three 15-lap runs. The track changes drastically. It completely changes and then you need something else in your car and you don’t have enough pit stops to adjust it every time or know exactly where the track is gonna go, so you kind of go off of history a little bit and where you think things might go.”
YOU WENT TO THE WHITE HOUSE THIS WEEK. WHAT WAS DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS TRIP? “Both times were really special. It’s an honor to be invited to the nation’s capital. It’s a surreal experience to see your race car sitting up in front of the White House. That was really, really special. The last time we went was back in ‘18 and we didn’t have the opportunity to go in ‘22 and now we have the opportunity to go back, so it was definitely really special to do that and have a little bit of an idea of what to expect this time, although it still didn’t go the way I expected, but it was still pretty special. You walk into the oval office and you just think, ‘Gosh, all the things that have happened in that room.’ The stories that we don’t know, we’ll never know, but it all happened in that room. It’s a pretty big thing to take a moment to let it soak in, so it’s special that we had the opportunity. Our sport gives us the opportunity to experience something that not many people will ever get to do, so I cherish that memory.”
HOW MUCH DIFFERENT IS THE TRACK WITH THE FANS SO CLOSE? “You hear them better. You definitely hear the cheers and the boos. They’re much more in your face. I like that. It’s cool. It kind of brings a little bit more of the stadium environment that other sports get to enjoy a little bit more. It’s hard to get that feeling when you’re on a mile and a half racetrack. You may have more people there than other sporting events, but they’re spread out. Here, they’re right there and you’re gonna hear it all after the race, just kind of like it happens at Martinsville as well, but this place is even larger, so it becomes a pretty fun experience most of the time.”
HOW COOL IS IT THAT THIS PLACE IS HOSTING A MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL GAME LATER THIS YEAR? “I think more for the facility than anything. You have this incredible facility, a ridiculous amount of seats. I think everybody wants to compete in the Last Great Colisseum. Everybody wants to do it and it presents an opportunity for something like that, and I couldn’t understand how big of a task it is to create a baseball field in the middle of a racetrack, but if anyone is gonna do it, Bristol will do it because they put dirt on a half mile and I thought that was impossible, too. Nothing will surprise me at this point.”
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT TALLADEGA IN TWO WEEKS? “Talladega is kind of a beast of its own. It’s really about the draft. The track is pretty wide, so it’s quite a bit different than Daytona and handling isn’t as big of a factor, at least through the corners. What ends up happening is the pushes and shoves, the draft itself becomes more aggressive so definitely a unique one, but Talladega, people show up there, too. Everyone knows it as the party track, but I will never see that. I just race there.”
YOU’VE WON THREE TIMES AT TALLADEGA. HOW IS THE DYNAMIC DIFFERENT FROM THE TWO RACES THERE? “The feeling is similar, but, to your point, the playoffs change it all depending on where you are in the playoffs. It’s definitely the racetrack when you roll in there of concern when you’re in the playoffs because there is only so much you can really control. There’s a lot you can, but you can get caught up in something from someone else’s decision, which happens a lot, and the wrecks more times than not happen towards the front of the pack and we’ve had really good cars and our team is really good at superspeedways, so we expect to be up there and then as you get down to the end of the race the most aggressive cars are gonna be the leaders because they have the most to gain. And then when you add the playoffs to it, where there’s so much more on the line than what it is in the spring, that’s really the biggest difference. Once you’re in the car and the task is going you’re focused in so much that you don’t really think a whole bunch about it. You think about the points, don’t get me wrong, about each spot and what it’s worth, but you strap in and you can race.”
WHAT DID YOU TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR VISIT TO CAMP LEJEUNE? “I’m always impressed with the commitment level of the military and it’s something that I say it every time we leave one of these Mission 600 events, and I’m so grateful that we get to do it because you get to see things up close and personal that the typical civilian, like myself but doesn’t get to see the commitment that not only the soldier is making but their family is making as well. Even the training that they go through is brutal. The training that they were going through when I was there was like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ They just got there that morning, they hiked 10 miles, they were sleeping out in the woods for a few nights. It was a training piece and they’re working on different missions and working on different things to try to be ready for whatever scenario could be coming their way, so the time commitment is one thing and the effort, but then you put the life and death scenario in front of you as well. It’s unlike anything else, and they’re fighting for you and me who are complete strangers. They’ve never met us. They don’t know who they’re fighting for, but they’re fighting for their country and what they believe in and that’s a commitment that none of us can understand. I like going there and saying thank you for one, but also learning a little bit about what they do and trying to bring that back to our world because a lot of times, and we’re all probably guilty of this, is we live in our own little world and we assume everything is taken care of and we just worry about the little things in our world that maybe really don’t matter in comparison to what these men and women are doing for us, so it’s good for us to remember that more than just on Memorial Day and this time of year. We need to be thinking about that every day because we do live in a great country and we shouldn’t be the people that complain about everything. There will always be something, but we need to be more appreciative of the people that allow us to live free and safe.”
THE STATS FOR YOU THIS YEAR ARE ALL OVER THE BOARD. HOW DO YOU ASSESS WHERE YOU ARE AND WHERE YOU NEED TO GO? “Thank God for stage points at this point for us. At times last year I could almost say the opposite, where we didn’t run very good and then we were able to fabricate a finish somehow. This year has just kind of been the opposite. You name it and it has happened. We’ve had good speed. Our car has been pretty solid. To your point, our average running position is good. We’ve led some laps. We’ve scored a lot of stage points, and then some things happen. It’s a long year. We’ve only just begun. We’re in the very beginning of this thing and the fact that we have speed gives me a lot of confidence that a win will be around the corner at some point. Do we have some areas we need to clean up? Yes. I’m not gonna pin all this on luck or misfortune of some sort. I don’t believe in that stuff, so there are areas as a team we can clean up and we’ll continue to work on that.”
JESSE LOVE WILL MAKE HIS FIRST CUP START. DO YOU REMEMBER THE SENSATION OF YOUR FIRST CUP START YEARS AGO? “Yeah. I remember you start making laps and keep going, and it’s the long green flag runs that will get you. You keep going and going and you just start to wonder like, ‘Gosh, is there ever gonna be a caution? I’d love a break.’ It doesn’t happen as much for me anymore, but for probably the first eight or 10 years I came here, that first few laps of practice you would be huffing and puffing after five. You’d be in there just hanging on and thinking, ‘How in the world am I gonna make 500 laps? There’s no way.’ Now I’ve become more relaxed and understand the scenario and I’m not hanging on for my dear life in there, so it’s changed, but the first few times you come here that’s how you feel. You run the first 10 laps in practice and think, ‘There is no way in hell I’m gonna make it to the end of this thing.’ You just figure it out. That’s what makes this place special. It’s hard. It’s challenging. Five hundred laps around here, it’s a long one.”
