Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Dover Media Availability
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Team Penske, will become the 34th driver in NASCAR Cup Series history to make 600 career starts when he takes the green flag on Sunday at Dover Motor Speedway. The three-time champ talked about that milestone as part of a weekly Ford media call.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – COMING ON YOUR 600TH START, YOU’RE FLYING OUT TO THE ESPYS FOR TOMORROW NIGHT’S SHOW. JUST ANOTHER TYPICAL WEEK FOR JOEY LOGANO, RIGHT? “I’ve never been to the ESPYS, so it’s probably a little different than average, but looking forward to it for sure. Iconic weekend with being able to hit that 600th start. That’s a pretty special one as well, so it’s a busy week for sure – a short one because we’ll be traveling a lot, but it’s all good.”
HOW DO YOU PROCESS THE EMOTIONS OF REACHING THIS MILESTONE WITH ALL YOU’VE ACCOMPLISHED? “I guess in two different ways. At first glance, I said, ‘Well, it just starts.’ But then when you start thinking about it, to be able to be around in a sport as an athlete competing at a top level for 16-plus years, and hitting 600 starts, it’s pretty incredible to have a career that long. It’s something that I take some pride in. I’m proud of that, to be able to hit this marker. It’s a lot of starts. I remember my 300th start and I think it was Kenseth at the time, maybe it was Truex as well, that weren’t too far from 600 and I thought, ‘Geez, that’s double the amount of races as me. That’s crazy.’ But here I am, so it went by pretty quick. It’s been a heck of a ride. This sport has been awesome to me and my family and I’m proud to be a part of it.”
I REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE A TEENAGER AND IN THE SECOND DOVER RACE YOU FLIPPED. NOW IT’S 16 YEARS LATER AND YOU ARE MAKING THE 600TH START AT DOVER AS A THREE-TIME CHAMP, FATHER, HUSBAND. WHAT HAS CHANGED MOST ABOUT HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF NOT JUST AS A DRIVER BUT AS A BRAND? “I grew up in front of everybody. All of us change over the years as you grow up. Life comes at you and you evolve and keep going with it. Everybody, when you were 18 years old to 35 years old are some of the biggest changes in your life happen in that period of time. Getting married, having kids – that’s the biggest change you can ever have in your life, I think – but I did all of this in front of everybody. Everybody went for the ride with me in ways, and not to mention the lessons learned on the racetrack and how I’ve changed as a race car driver, too, over that period of time, where I was a young, cocky kid coming in to getting my humble pie and learning how to become a champion and learning a lot of lessons in front of everybody. It’s kind of neat that race fans have been around that long and they see the evolution, if you will, of myself and, like you said, it’s interesting to publicly grow up in front of people, but it’s part of what sports are and being in the limelight, but it’s been a heck of a ride, for sure.”
YOU ARE 35 YEARS OLD AND HAVE NOT MENTIONED RETIREMENT BY ANY MEANS, BUT YOU ARE AT THAT AGE WHEN DRIVERS MAYBE START THINKING ABOUT IT. HAVE YOU GIVEN ANY THOUGHT TO HOW LONG YOU WANT TO CONTINUE DOING THIS? “I always say as long as I can win. I really feel like that’s the standard for me. I love racing, but I really love winning a lot more. If I can go race other things and win, I’ll go and do that, but my dream has always been to be a NASCAR driver, be a NASCAR champion and if I can win and be a help to my team, then I want to stick around. As soon as I feel like I’m a drag on the team and I’m not bringing anything to the table anymore, whether that’s on the racetrack or off the racetrack, that’s when I need to get out of the way at that point. I want to see Roger Penske and his race team and the people that are there be successful. I care about them a lot, so I want to be a way to contribute to that. That’s what I want out of myself. If I was Roger Penske, I would expect that out of an employee, especially for as long as I’ve been there. That, to me, is gonna be the deciding factor when that is. I don’t want to stick around and be one of those guys where people say, ‘Man, he went a few years too long.’ You don’t want to be that guy. I think whenever that happens, that happens. I don’t know when that is. I would be an idiot to think you can be competing at the top level into your fifties. What athlete has ever done that? Something changes at some point, but, right now, I still feel as fresh as ever. I feel as sharp as ever. I’m driven as much as ever. I still care. I still get emotional about things, so that shows me I care a lot. With those factors still there when the end is, I don’t know yet. I don’t know.”
YOU HAVE WON JUST ABOUT EVERY PRIZE IN NASCAR, BUT YOU HAVE NOT WON THE BRICKYARD 400 YET. WHAT WOULD THAT MEAN TO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY IF YOU BROUGHT THEM TO INDY IN TWO WEEKS? “That’s the one that definitely stands out to me. That is the number one race on the list to want to win just because it’s Indy. The history. How iconic that speedway is. The dream of kissing the bricks is a real thing. That’s the real thing for me. I would love to be in that position some day. We’ve been close many times. Obviously, Roger Penske now owning the racetrack and being my boss adds more to it, but it was there before that. Like, that racetrack holds enough prestige that it doesn’t matter who you are and who you drive for you want to win that race. You want to go in the history books as an Indianapolis winner in anything, so that one would be special. I was up there a few weeks ago and got to go through the museum. By the way, if anyone is going to Indy, make some time to go through the museum that has been renovated. It is absolutely incredible. It’s the best motorsports museum I’ve ever seen. It is done to the t, just the way you would think Roger Penske does things. It is spectacular, so if you’re there, do that. You won’t regret it, but winning there would be even better than that.”
YOU TALKED EARLIER ABOUT HOW YOU REACT DIFFERENTLY NOW WHEN YOU GET OUT OF THE CAR FROM WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER. HOW HAS HAVING CHILDREN CHANGED YOU AS A DRIVER AND YOUR APPROACH? “It hasn’t much. It hasn’t changed really much at the racetrack for me. It’s changed everything for me at home. It’s changed why I do things a lot. I’m not doing it for myself as much as I’m doing it for my family now, so that piece has changed a lot. I think what happens at the racetrack is a different category to me, and I just compartmentalize a lot of things and racing is in its own department in my life. It’s separate from my family. I really want it to be separate and keep it that way, but I don’t think that the choices made on the racetrack or off the racetrack would be any different because I have kids now. It’s the same – the same mentality that I’ve always had. I just feel like it’s more refined, if you will, on how to handle every scenario because it’s a been there, done that moment more times than not now. Anytime something comes up I’m like, ‘Yep. Been here. I know now not to handle it, maybe let’s try something different this time. It’s just the same as everybody. As you do things more often, you’re gonna evolve and get better at it.”
HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR YOU AND YOUR CREW CHIEF TO GET TOGETHER AHEAD OF RACES LIKE INDY, SO THAT YOU’RE ON THE SAME PAGE WHEN THOSE SITUATIONS ARISE? “There are obviously strategies and you talked about going into the weekend, but even more so after practice when you kind of see what you’ve got. Do you have winning speed? Do you have so-so speed? Where are we at and how do we fabricate a victory somehow? That’s what it comes down to. There’s none better than Paul Wolfe at doing it and he’s got a great team behind him feeding him really good information to where we can make good choices. I’m part of those conversations with him. I put in my two cents where I think I can pull a strategy off or I can’t, but those are kind of the conversations that we have and we try to make the decisions together.”
DID YOU SEE ANY OF THE TY GIBBS SITUATION OF HIM COMING INTO HIS PIT STALL AND CLIPPING THE TIRE THAT THE TIRE CARRIER HAD? HOW DO YOU HANDLE YOUR RESPONSIBILITY AS A DRIVER VERSUS GAMESMANSHIP? “In my opinion, when you’re driving your race car, you have a lot of power and a lot of responsibility in your hands. You’re driving a huge machine. It’s super fast and it’s in close quarters. You can do a lot. You’re in a different world than when you are driving your street car. The rules are kind of out the window when you get on the racetrack for the most part. There are some, but compared to what you have on the road and things you can and can’t do, a race car you can go as fast as you want to go. You can do a lot of different things, so you have a lot of power in there, but you have a lot of responsibility on how you handle situations. You said it. There’s a lot of gamesmanship in how things work. I, personally, I can only talk from my personal experiences, you don’t want to put someone in danger of hurting you. With that said, guilty, been there, we’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all done maybe the wrong thing at times, but I think when you look at these pit crew guys, it’s not only their life but it’s their livelihood on top of that. It’s how they make money for their family and the last thing you want to do is hurt one of them. I’ve never wanted to hurt somebody on pit road. At the same time, and I’m not saying in this scenario I’m talking just any scenario, pit crew members also have a responsibility to not be jumping out there too far and playing the game of trying to brush your car back. That’s not OK, either. Everyone’s got to work together a little bit on pit road, especially when it’s tight scenarios like that. I can’t speak on Ty’s situation that much. I don’t know exactly what happened. I don’t know if he meant to brush him back and to that. In this case, I didn’t really see that the crew member was out there in the middle of pit road and put himself in a bad spot, just kind of maybe a tricky way of looking at it. I put it in the middle, so I can’t answer it, but I do know that it’s a little bit of a knife to a gun fight as pit crew members when you’re looking at a car coming at you versus you’re sitting there with two tires in your hand or an air gun or a jack. It can go bad real quick.”
THE FLIP AT DOVER IN YOUR ROOKIE YEAR, DID YOU THINK 16 YEARS LATER YOU WOULD BE SITTING HERE WITH ALL OF THESE ACCOMPLISHMENTS? “To answer your question, in the middle of that wreck I was just hoping to get stopped and I wasn’t gonna be hurt and was gonna live another day because to this day it’s the longest crash I’ve ever been a part of. It just kept going and going and going, but I guess I’ve always had high expectations for myself. I’ve always expected to win championships and win races and, to be honest with you, I’ve not met my expectations, so I’ve always felt like I haven’t done enough or done good enough. At the same time, probably what makes me great is because I always have the feeling that I haven’t done enough. I haven’t prepared enough. I haven’t won enough. I haven’t done anything enough yet, and I think that’s probably a good thing. It’s not the most enjoyable experience when you think that way, but it’s that lack of complacency that I think has led to some success. Am I proud of what we’ve accomplished? Absolutely, I just really felt like there would have been more because that’s what I expect out of myself.”
OVER 600 STARTS YOU WILL HAVE RUN-INS WITH DRIVERS. HOW DO YOU VIEW RIVALRIES AND WHAT DO YOU VIEW AS THE BIGGEST RIVALRY IN THIS TIME? “I honestly don’t put that much thought into it, to be honest with you. Rivalries are great for sports. There’s no doubt about that. People love them. It draws a lot of attention. It’s not a bad thing. There are two different kinds of rivalries. There’s a rivalry where everyone is wrecking each other. There’s that type, which aren’t the healthy kind, and then there are the rivalries that are just win for win and kind of going back and forth, where you get two of the best going back and forth on just wins. I think those are the best kind of rivalries. Those are the more fun ones to be a part of when you get two dogs going back and forth at each other trading wins, those are the best kind. Trading punches, those are ones that are fun for a moment, but I don’t think that’s really the best thing about our sport in general. We’re just any sport. I don’t care about seeing that too much, it’s just drama at that point. I like seeing the competition rivalries the most. I feel like it’s flowed and changed over the years so much with who that is. Every year it feels like it could be someone different who could be that hot shot guys.”
HOW MUCH DO DRIVERS NEED TO BE CEO’S OF THEIR OWN BRANDS WHERE MAYBE YEARS OR DECADES AGO THAT WASN’T THE CASE. WHAT ROLE DO YOU PLAY IN THAT? “I think years and decades ago drivers did think of it because it’s such a part of our sport. Our sponsors are looking at the driver more than anything else. What is the biggest selling point to the sponsor? Some of it is the team, but a lot of it is the driver, so you have to think about what is your brand and the plays that you make to grow that. But the number one most important thing, I believe, is being authentic to your brand. Be who you are. When someone is being fake, it’s so obvious. Everyone on this call, you know who those people are. You can pick them out so easy. You know when someone is not being who they are. Being yourself is the most important thing. For me, I recognize what those key things are of what the Joey Logano brand is – hard racer, wins as much as he can and works hard to do that, and I love cars. I’m a car guy. It’s that simple, and I’m a family man. Those are the things that make Joey Logano who he is. All of us have a brand. Everybody on this call, your brand is your personality. That’s who you are and you want to protect that no matter what you’re doing.”
