Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Bank of America 400 Media Availability — Charlotte Motor Speedway
Saturday, October 4, 2025
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse, comes into this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series elimination race 13 points above the cut line. He spoke to members of the media before today’s qualifying session about his situation.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WE SAW YOU RIDING AROUND IN YOUR BACKYARD EARLIER THIS WEEK. WAS THAT PRACTICE FOR THIS WEEKEND? “It’s kind of an every week occurrence. There are a lot of good perks with being a race car driver, but one of the coolest things if you do this long enough is you can afford to build your own racetrack and it’s pretty cool. It’s like the coolest thing in the world. It’s like as a child that’s all you wanted is to be able to walk out your front door and jump in your go-kart or your four-wheeler and go have some fun. It’s like every little boy’s dream, so I built a racetrack and it’s awesome. I don’t know if my neighbors love it or not, but I do and they all seem to be pretty cool about it. They haven’t really said anything, so that’s good. I love driving still. Nothing has changed for me since I was a little kid. That’s what I did everyday I got home from school is I’d jump on a go-kart or I’d jump on my quad and I’d go ride. I still do the same thing when I get home from work though, and the good thing is my oldest is becoming fast enough to race with dad and it’s becoming more fun again, so it’s pretty cool.”
HOW DO YOU APPROACH SUNDAY? ARE YOU GOING TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE GUYS AROUND YOU IN THE POINTS AND WANT TO HEAR WHERE THEY ARE? “Absolutely. I want to know it all. I want everything, all the information I can possibly get said to me. I think everybody knows you make better decisions when you have all the data and we’re asked to make decisions in the heat of the battle live. There’s no time to talk it through in a boardroom. We’ve got to make the decision at that moment, so the more prepared we can be the better, but also understanding what the situation is, what’s going on around me and what I have to do inside the race car.”
CAN YOU RECALL THE RANGE OF EMOTIONS A YEAR AGO WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ELIMINATED AND THEN REINSTATED? DID YOU FEEL A SENSE OF DESTINY AFTERWARDS? “No. I don’t ever feel like anything is owed to me. You just roll with whatever comes your way and it shows how unpredictable life is and sometimes you don’t need to be going up and down with every wave. I remember the emotions leaving the track. I was bummed. I was like, ‘Well, on one hand we did really good here last year,’ so I was proud of the effort that we gave. I was bummed that we were just a little short, but it is what it is. That’s how I am at the end of the race. It is what it is. I can’t change it now and you just have to keep looking out the windshield and we went home. We went home and had a fairly normal evening, and then I got a call and it was like, ‘Hey, honey, you ain’t gonna believe it. We’re back in.’ Obviously, the next seven days after that changed everything because we went from out to in to winning Vegas and in the Championship 4 and winning our third title, so just a quick turn of events, but that’s NASCAR racing for you. It’s unpredictable. Things can change really, really fast. You just have to keep rolling with it.”
HOW DO YOU DUPLICATE THAT SUCCESS AND WIN AGAIN AT VEGAS NEXT WEEK? “It’s one step at a time. We’ve got to get through this week first. This week right now is the most important race of the season for us. We’ve got to get through this one. Hopefully, we can continue to be in the championship race after this and at that point we’ll look at Vegas, but right now 100 percent of our focus is at the Roval.”
WHEN YOU WERE LISTENING TO BUBBA WALLACE. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHEN YOU’RE RACING HARD AGAINST TEAMMATES? “I honestly feel like it’s one of the most challenging relationships that you can ever go through because when you think about other team sports you’re on the same team. That team wins together. In this case, you’re on the same team, but only one of you get to win. It gets really confusing. One win is good for everybody and there’s truth to that. I’ve seen that over my years of driving, how your perspective changes over the years. When you first come in it’s me, me, me, me, me, and then you kind of eventually see the big picture if you do it long enough, how the whole ecosystem is really created and how it is good for everyone to see victory at Team Penske or whatever respective team that may be. So, with that said, it’s still challenging because only one driver gets the stat. Only one driver gets the points. Only one driver gets the paycheck. That’s true and there’s also the team aspect, where there’s everyone working on the cars at the shop of course, but then there’s also individual pit crews, there’s individual road crews, crew chiefs, engineers, so there is some separation there as well. It’s a very challenging relationship to navigate and it gets stressed a lot. It’s just unique. I have never seen anything like it in my time.”
YOUR PENSKE TEAMMATES SAY YOU TALK ABOUT THOSE SITUATIONS IN ADVANCE, SO WHAT IS THE WORD ABOUT WHEN THOSE THINGS HAPPEN? “You’ve got to race. We try to run through as many scenarios as possible and a lot of what-ifs. The longer you work with a team, the better that becomes because everyone understands. But, at the same time, we’re supposed to race, so you’ve got to weigh that out, too, because that’s our jobs as our fans expect that out of us. There’s a lot of arguments that will argue the other side, so you try to find some happy medium and what is the rules of engagement. What is acceptable when we’re racing for a win? Basically, one of us better win. I think that’s the simplest way of looking at it. One of us better come out with the win. I don’t think there’s probably a more challenging situation that can possibly come up than what Ryan and I went through in Phoenix last year. That’s not just a win, that’s a championship and it’s coming down, mano a mano just the two of us within a car length of each other. It’s a tough situation for both of us to be in.”
THERE SEEMS TO BE A LOT OF TALK ABOUT GETTING YOU AND RYAN OUT OF THE PLAYOFFS. WHAT’S IT LIKE KNOWING THAT YOUR COMPETITORS ARE THINKING ABOUT YOU? “Cool. Good. I want to keep them there. That’s fine. We have a reputation of just grinding it out and sticking around and showing up when it matters, and so that’s been our reputation over the last 10 years plus because we continue to do that. Last week, obviously, didn’t go the way we wanted it to, getting caught up in that wreck, but we’re still in a good position this weekend. We’ll just focus on ourselves and what everyone else wants to say, they’ll say. You just focus on you.”
DO YOU BELIEVE IN A MENTAL ADVANTAGE? “Absolutely.”
IS THERE ONE RACE THAT STANDS OUT AS ONE WHERE SOMETHING HAPPENED AND YOU STILL CAME BACK AND WON? “Gosh, I don’t know off the top of my head. You kind of caught me off guard there. There are a lot of races that come up that way. I mean, these days in Cup racing you could almost argue that every win is a championship performance because the cars are so close that you have to be perfect. You really can’t have a mistake these days and expect to recover and drive through the field. The cars are just too close in speed and passing is more challenging because of that, so I’d say you win these things these days it takes everything. The pit stops have to be perfect. The restarts have to be perfect. The car has to be really, really good. All of those things have to be lined up perfect to win one of these things these days, so it’s kind of hard to say any of them. I feel like it’s harder to win these days than it even used to be just because there are more cars that can.”
WERE YOU PART OF THE MEETING WITH NASCAR THIS MORNING AND HOW DID IT GO? “I can’t say anything (laughing). No, it was fine. They just ran us through some marketing stuff, some plans for next year on what the sport is gonna look like, which is super exciting by the way. I’m not gonna spill the beans, but it’s super cool, and then just some competition stuff, some stuff along with the rules, how things are called, some safety stuff. They just kind of run through those categories with the drivers and see if the drivers have any comments on where we’re going as a sport or anything that’s concerning.
WHAT MOST EXCITED YOU? “To me, I think where we’re going from a marketing standpoint next year is really exciting.”
WHAT WENT THROUGH YOUR MIND WHEN YOU GOT THAT FOURTH WIN OF YOUR CAREER IN VEGAS AND NEW YOU WERE IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP 4? “Just pure excitement because the goal when you start the season is to win the championship and it takes a lot of stepping stones to get to that place. One of the largest ones is just getting to the Championship 4. That’s the one closest to the championship, so getting to the Championship 4 is so hard to do, so when we won that race, you automatically know, ‘Gosh, we’re in it. We’ve got a chance.’ And then you know that you’ve got a couple weeks advantage on everybody. The excitement is real and then it goes straight back to the pressure automatically kicks in. Maybe 30 minutes after the race and the adrenaline starts to come down, you’re like, ‘We’ve got to start working on Phoenix now.’ It starts happening really fast because you’re that close. As great as it is to make the Championship 4, it equally sucks to not win it – to get that far and not accomplish the goal. That hurts so bad, so you just want to make sure you have everything ready.”
HOW IS THE FALL RACE AT VEGAS COMPARED TO THE SPRING RACE? IS IT MORE STRESSFUL GOING INTO THAT ONE? “Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it’s way more stressful. It’s the playoffs. There’s more on the line. You’re getting close, so for the eight that are still in it, absolutely there’s more pressure.”
