Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Friday, February 21, 2020
EVENT: Pennzoil 400 Media Availability
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Pennzoil Ford Mustang – WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS WEEKEND? “It’s getting rolling. A lot of changes you guys all know about at Team Penske, so it’s kind of been a fun experience through Daytona. Daytona is a unique best as you guys know and we’re kind of glad to get out of there and get out here to Vegas and start working on our cars in a different way than what you do in Daytona, and as we go through this west coast swing a lot of things will change pretty quickly. Paul and I and all of us just try to keep linking up on what means the most on the race track and what we need to focus on and how to race, so we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but I’m excited about it. It’s been a fun challenge so far.”
HOW DO YOU PROCESS WHAT YOU SAW WITH NEWMAN? Oh, man. It’s hard to process it because immediately, and I think we all kind of probably thought the same thing, is you kind of think the worst and you really hope for the best. Just by the looks of it and what happened, you’re just like, ‘this is bad.’ Obviously, it was, but what a miracle to see him walking out with his kids the other day. Who’d have seen that coming? That’s amazing to be able to do that so quickly. It says a lot about the medical team that goes to the race tracks with us. Obviously, that’s a tough situation to figure out how to get someone out of the car in a safe way, get to the hospital and treat and care the way we need to. Obviously, the crash itself was probably the worst spot possible coming to a checkered flag like that. Nobody lifts, unfortunately. Everyone just drives to the start-finish line and that’s why you sometimes see crashes like that at the superspeedways at the end of a race, and it couldn’t have been in a worse spot of the car, but to kind of see that he’s gonna be OK from what I hear, it’s awesome. That’s amazing. It says a lot about what our race cars are and I think even this NextGen car in some of those areas where the impact was seems to be, from at least my non-engineering degree perspective, looks like it should be stronger in that spot. So I’m glad to see that NASCAR is already looking at it, even before this in that area, and I look forward to getting in that car and have something even safer to drive. You have a lot of huge impacts down there. Even my impact was maybe the hardest one I’ve taken as well, being in the door like that and having no give. You end up absorbing a lot of it, but everything did its job and we all walked away. I texted Newman, you guys will get a kick out of this. I texted him and said, “I knew it wasn’t your neck that broke. I don’t think you could do that.” We have a neck joke going back and forth because I’ve got a long one and he’s got none. We had a good joke about that at least, so his sense of humor still seems to be there.”
AS ONE OF THE TALLER GUYS IN THE GARAGE HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR HEIGHT WITH THE NEXTGEN CAR? “Better. It’s no secret. There’s zero advantage of being tall as a race car driver. From the weight aspect or even the safety aspect you’re higher in the car, your legs are cramped up more. Obviously, you need all the space that’s in the cockpit. One of the things when I was in the meetings about the NextGen car that I brought up is that we need to make sure we have enough room in the cockpit for a taller driver. Obviously, it’s important to me and when I drove that thing at Phoenix just initially sitting in it I sit quite a bit lower in that car. I have more headroom to the rollcage, which is really important. Obviously, we see why from last week why it’s important to have some room up there. I was able to see plenty fine. I’m one of the taller drivers.
“That may be the advantage is that I can see a little bit more being taller, but if you’re shorter you just raise the seat up and you can see as well. Visually, no issues. I think we’re sitting a little bit more toward the center of the car, which is a good thing, and then also being lower your head is being lowered to what the rollcage is is also a huge positive, so those are all good things.”
DID YOU TALK TO BRAD AFTER THE 500? “Yeah, we talk. We all talk. We’re not in high school. We can all talk about things. It’s OK.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS PLACE THAT CLICKS? “I don’t know. Honestly, it’s been one of those race tracks that I think early in my career, I think one of my first top 10s is actually here when we didn’t run good anywhere. There was something about Vegas that kind of clicked for me right off the bat. It’s been a really good race track for us. We finally won here. It took a while, but our average finish and the consistency has been there for a long time, so that’s a great thing, but I don’t know. Something about it just fits my style. I think that you can move around. It’s fast. You’ve got two corners that are completely different. You’ve got a lot of bumps you’ve got to deal with. It takes a lot to make it work, but I think if you look at Team Penske as a whole, obviously Brad has been very good here, and this 22 car has been good as well. So I think just putting the Penske deal together and also with the driver pairings I think it just ends up being a pretty good match for us.”
DOES HAVING PAUL ON THE BOX NOW GIVE YOU EVEN MORE CONFIDENCE HERE? “It’s kind of been fun conversations because it’s like ‘what was different between your car and what I ran here last year?’ There are a lot of similarities at this race track from what we both ran, but you kind of just talk those parts out. I was kind of open to it. I said, ‘Listen, you guys ran good. I ran good here last year, kind of go with what you feel is the best and we’ll kind of deal with it as we get through practice and tune the balance in or makes adjustments from there.’ So that’s kind of how it’s gonna be for the most part at the beginning part of the season is ‘don’t change it to me quite yet, do what works for you and then we’ll kind of adjust as we go along.’”
AUTO CLUB SPEEDWAY IS UP NEXT. HOW DO YOU THINK THE CARS WILL REACT? “Auto Club to me is maybe one of the coolest race tracks we go to. It definitely is one of the coolest. There are a lot of great things about it, being able to move around the race track, tire wear, the draft, you really have a good mix of the Daytona-type of big draft going on, and then the mix with a mile-and-a-half type handling and needing to find room on the corners and those type of things. It makes for a really, really fun race. I enjoy it. I love going out there and I really want to win there because they have a really, really cool trophy. It’s a surfboard in the old Woody Wagon and all and it looks really cool.”
WHO WOULD PLAY JIMMIE JOHNSON IN A MOVIE? “I don’t watch enough movies to know any actors to know who would play Jimmie Johnson. I don’t know any names. I’m a horrible person to ask, I’m sorry. I can’t sit down in front of a TV long enough.”
DID RYAN TEXT BACK? “Yeah, we joked about it and laughed back and forth about it. Like I said it’s good to see him walking, obviously, but also being Ryan still – that nothing has really changed. I think that’s something we’re all so happy about. I just felt for everyone in this situation. I think of Blaney, I think of LaJoie all in the crash and then that happening. Although it wasn’t any of their faults, obviously, you’re involved in it and you’re gonna relive that in your mind and I know that situation, so I reached out to them as well. I just felt like that’s hard. I think everyone kind of forgets about that situation as well, and it should. All attention should be on Newman, but those guys that were so close to what it was. Anybody here besides drivers that can understand the situation they’re put in and had to kind of get through for the next couple of days until they hear Ryan is OK, that’s a very tough spot as well.”
IF ANOTHER BAR NEEDED TO GO IN WOULD IT BE WHERE THE WINDOW NET IS? IS THERE A WAY TO DO IT WHERE IT WOULD BE REMOVEABLE SO IF YOU DO NEED TO GET OUT OF THE CAR QUICKLY THAT YOU CAN? “You’re talking to someone who just has an RCD – Race Car Driver Diploma – which is not enough to have a structural engineering degree that can tell you what I need as far as a rollcage and all that. Earning your RCD is not easy either. It takes a lot of years. You just don’t hand those out either.”
IS THERE LESS FIELD OF VISION IN THESE CARS? “Our field of vision has been pretty much the same as far as I can remember being in this sport. When I drove the NextGen car it wasn’t any different. You’re still able to see quite a bit of the car. We can’t turn our heads and check out blind spots, but we have spotters for that, that should help along with that. When you’re going this fast you can feel them. You know when somebody is at a certain point of your car. You can feel the air working off your car, so you know. Sometimes if they’re further away or things like that, that’s where it’s harder to see if there’s more separation. That’s more challenging to see, but it’s been like that for a long, long time. We try to adjust our mirrors to where we can see everything around us, but there’s always ggnna be a little, small spot that we’re challenged to see or our perception might be a little bit off.”
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE PULL ON YOUR CAR AND THEN THE SUDDEN AMOUNT OF DOWNFORCE YOU GET WHEN YOU PULL OUT? “That’s a tough question to put into words of what it’s like, but if you get in the draft you can feel the acceleration in the car, you know especially now with this 550 package and as much wide-open as you are, when you get a tow from someone you feel a little bit more speed, RPMs come up, depending on if you’re getting a car from behind or you’re getting a push from behind you or you’re getting towed ahead of you, you can feel that. You’re getting side drafted it’s like putting the brakes on. You can really feel that and dirty air it’s unpredictable. It’s kind of a situation that is very turbulent as you can imagine driving down the road behind a tractor-trailer. Sometimes if you’re driving a bigger car you can feel the turbulence, well you’re only going 70 miles an hour when that happens.
“Now you’re going 180 or whatever we’re doing and obviously a pretty big hole in the air and we’re relying on every bit of it we can, then when a car goes to a different lane that you weren’t expecting them to, and takes your air after you’ve committed to driving into the corner at a certain speed, that’s where you see it in re-watching some of the races I’ve seen it happen here in the spring, where you expect a car to go to the bottom and you’ve been running the top and someone runs the top and, boom, you’re in the wall. It happens that quick. That’s why you see restarts and stuff are just kind of crazy trying to figure out where everyone is gonna go because if you can find a spot where there is some clean air, great, you can move forward, and then you’ve got to try to find the draft down the straightaway because, if not, you’ll see the outside lane tag right by you. It’s quite the thought process you’ve got to go through at a really quick rate to figure out what’s the right moves to try to get ahead of somebody.”
DO YOU FEEL THE CLEAN AIR AS QUICKLY AS YOU FEEL THE DIRTY AIR? “Yep, and clean air – it’s not like the car is locked down. It’s not like you put it on a rail and it just goes. You’re still sliding your tires at the limit of the potential of the car, it’s just way more than what it would be when you don’t have clean air on it. Understanding this aero, I always call it an aero war out there because you’re always just trying to figure out, ‘how do you get clean air and how do you get the person behind you dirty air?’ Moving to the left side of the car, it’s no secret, moving to the left side of the car is way better than moving to the right side of a car with the way the weight comes off these things. Understanding all that is a lot and you really have to know who you’re racing and the moves that they tend to make.”
