Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Team Penske NASCAR Hall of Fame Exhibit Unveil
Thursday, May 21, 2026
The NASCAR Hall of Fame celebrated Team Penske’s 60th anniversary by unveiling a new exhibit that highlights some of the organization’s most memorable moments. Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse, has 35 career NASCAR Cup Series victories and three championships since joining the organization in 2013. He, along with Executive Vice President Walt Czarnecki, was at the event and spoke about what it means to be part of Roger Penske’s legacy.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – WHAT IS IT LIKE TO SEE YOUR 2024 CHAMPIONSHIP MUSTANG SITTING HERE IN THE NASCAR HALL OF FAME AS PART OF THIS EXHIBIT? “I guess it’s a pretty neat thing. I haven’t thought about it that much. I’m very fortunate. I have a boss and an owner of the car that is willing to display it and give me the opportunity to see it. Obviously, all of these cars that are in the Penske exhibit changed people’s lives one way or the other and all of them in positive ways because they’re all very special cars. Whether it’s the people that built it or the drivers themselves that have very fond memories of very special times. It’s special to come in here and get to watch the video that was done. I haven’t seen it since it was completed, so it was great kind of reliving the moment a little bit of how special that weekend really was and what went into it, and hearing it from the perspective of a couple other people that were on the team, hearing it from their point of view, is really fun too. I look forward to coming down here again. Like I said, bringing my family down here. I’ll encourage the team to come down here as well and learn a little bit more about the company that we work for and the pioneers of Team Penske that built what we have today.”
YOU ARE 38 POINTS BELOW THE CHASE CUTLINE. LOOKING AHEAD TO THE 600 WITH FOUR STAGES, HOW MUCH OF AN ADDED EMPHASIS IS THERE ON THIS WEEKEND? “It’s the same amount every week. You can’t do more than 100 percent because you’re already at it. It’s hard to find a little bit more. We’re as focused as we know how to be and doing everything we can to make up the deficit that we’re at. Obviously, we’re way behind compared to where we’ve been in the past and where we should be, so we’ve got work to do and hopefully this weekend we’re able to turn it around a little bit.”
YOU HAVE TWO OF YOUR MUSTANG RACE CARS ON DISPLAY HERE IN THE NASCAR HALL OF FAME. THAT MUST BE PRETTY SPECIAL, RIGHT? “It really is special. Honestly, when I walked in here I saw Glory Road and saw my car in the front I was like, ‘Whoa. Is that for today because we’re here doing this?’ And they said, no, it was going to be up here for three years or something like that, so that’s gonna be something I take a lot of pride in. It’s a pinch yourself kind of moment. It feels surreal because I still see myself as a normal Joe who gets to drive race cars. I’ve been so blessed to work for an incredible team that’s allowed me to have some success in this sport and have a car in the Hall of Fame. I would have never guessed that. I think of my career before Team Penske and what it was looking like and what it was gonna be to where it is today and it just goes to prove that it depends a lot on who is around you and the team that is there. I wish I could tell everyone how to do that. I really think I just got lucky. I think God just put the right people in my life to help me be successful and at that point it’s up to you on how you handle success and what you do with it, how you make more of it, but it’s definitely a special moment. It’s really cool to be here.”
WHAT MEMORIES DO YOU HAVE WHEN YOU SEE THESE TWO CARS SITTING HERE? “There are memories when you look at the cars, but the videos to me matter the most. A photo can say 1000 words and watching that back, like I said, might be even better than any of it is hearing it from the perspective of the other people on the team because you don’t truly know how they felt. I remember how I felt and how special it was, but to see how special it was to everyone else on the team and hearing it from their perspective, those interviews to me mean a lot. I’m gonna ask them to send me that video because I want to have it for years down the road. A championship is what it’s all about. That’s the bottom line. That’s all we care about is about winning a championship, so those moments you cannot experience it any other way. I’m fully convinced there’s not another way in life that you can experience the moment of winning a sport’s championship as a competitor. There’s nothing like it. Getting married, having kids, all amazing milestones in life, but they’re in different categories. Those are equally amazing, but a different category than winning at a sport. It all happens like that (snapping his fingers). You don’t know you’ve got it until it happens and emotions hit you all at one time. It was pretty surreal at those moments. It’s pure celebration, joy, screaming and yelling. There are no words to describe it, and I’ve been very fortunate to get to experience that three times.”
DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE CAR THAT ISN’T ONE OF YOURS THAT IS IN THE DISPLAY? “I probably go more towards the nostalgic stuff. The F1 car is amazing and the Indy cars are cool, but I’d probably go with Rusty’s car. It’s just incredible and also the history from the NASCAR side of Team Penske. Obviously, that’s the area I’m specialized in, so the history with that car is really special, but also I just think it looks really cool and it’s a really pretty car. I can’t really fit in any of the other ones, if I’m being honest. I have zero chance of driving them – not that anyone is really driving these cars – but I would have no chance of driving those.”
HOW MUCH PRESSURE WAS ON YOU WHEN YOU MOVED TO TEAM PENSKE? DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THAT WAS LIKE? “There’s pressure on you all the time to succeed in sports. You either perform or you’re out. We all know that when we signed up for it, but you do it for the hopes of that moment. That’s why you do it, but it’s tough. It’s a lot of pressure, but pressure is earned. You want to find ways to put pressure on yourself. That means you’re doing something and as a driver you want to put yourself in the highest pressure moments you can be in. If you drive for a mediocre team, there’s probably not that much pressure on you to be successful. There’s a backup excuse built in and you can blame it on the car. When you drive for Team Penske, you can’t blame it on the car. You can’t blame it on the team. There’s one finger it’s pointed to and it’s gonna be the driver because everything else is in place. I knew that coming in, but isn’t that what you want? If you really want to be successful, don’t you want to have the team there? Sure, you’re gonna feel that and, sure, it’s gonna be uncomfortable. There are gonna be sleepless nights and there are gonna be moments you feel like you shouldn’t be there. I get it. I’ve done all that, but I’d still rather have it that way than any other way.”
YOU HEAR A LOT OF DRIVERS SAY THEY’LL LOOK BACK ON THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS WHEN THEY GET OLD AND RETIRE. WHAT IS IT LIKE TO HAVE A FACILITY LIKE THIS THAT YOU CAN APPRECIATE WHAT YOU’VE DONE WHILE YOU’RE STILL IN THE PRIME OF YOUR CAREER? “This feels like I’m a little too young to be in here because my career is still going. These are typically things that you see post-career or years later, but I take a lot of pride in working somewhere for a long period of time. Walt was talking about how there are a lot of employees that have been there for 30 years. I want to be one of those people. I’ve only been there for 15, but I’ve really enjoyed being there and when you’re able to be somewhere for a long period of time the equity that’s built up, the relationships that are there, when you come to something like this you take a little bit more ownership in it. If you bounce around from team to team or job to job, you don’t have that sense of pride when you see a team’s success. I know there are a lot of employees at Team Penske that are gonna feel the same way I do because they’ve been there a long time. They say, ‘I was a big part of that because I’ve been here forever.’ And I think that’s something that’s gonna be really special for everybody here. I think I say it at the end of the video about how important it is to me to be driving the same car for as long as I have. The brand identity that is there when you see that car. It’s tied directly to Team Penske, Ford, Shell and Joey Logano. That’s what people know that car as. No one is guessing. Everybody knows it at this point. That’s really special in this day and age. There aren’t many people that stay in the same job for very long and there may be different reasons for all those things, but, for us, it’s the best scenario I could ever be in and I just don’t want to ruin it. I don’t want to screw that up (laughing).”
YOUR 2022 and 2024 PHOENIX MUSTANGS ARE HERE. HOW SIMILAR WERE THOSE TWO CARS? “Obviously, they’re both Next Gen cars, so there’s not much different between any of them. You see some body differences – little things – but honestly those two championships were so close in time that the cars themselves aren’t that much different. You can go back to the 2018 car, that one looks much different, obviously. That one is really fun for me to look at because it’s quite some time ago and how different the cars are now. You tend to forget a little bit about the nuances of that car because you’re so in tune with what’s going on with today’s car, so that one is a lot of fun to go back and look at, but this one (‘24) when I look at it I go, ‘Yeah, that looks like the one I’m racing this weekend.’ There’s really not a whole bunch different.”
