Ford Performance NASCAR: Logano and Biffle Hoping For Another Loudon Win

Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
5-Hour Energy 301 Advance – New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Friday, July 17, 2015

Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion, won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race here at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in September.  He stopped by the infield media center to talk about returning to a place where he’s won twice in his career.

JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – THOUGHTS ON COMING BACK AFTER WINNING LAST YEAR.  “Anytime you come back to a race track that you won at, coming off a weekend that you had a really good run at in Kentucky, the confidence is high in the team.  I think that’s good.  That’s what momentum is, it’s just confidence.  This is a race track that I’ve always loved coming to.  I consider it my home race track.  To be able to have two really good runs here last year.  We were running second before we got crashed and then we came back and won the fall race, so it’s a special place for me considering I started my first Cup race here and watched my first Cup race when I was seven here, so this is just a special place to come to and I’ve always enjoyed it.  It’s a tricky place.  It took me a long time to understand what it takes to go fast, but lately the last four or five times we’ve been here we’ve had some fast cars, so I’m ready to go.  I can’t wait to get on the track.”

INDIANAPOLIS IS NEXT WEEK AND THIS WILL BE YOUR FIRST TIME GOING THERE AFTER ROGER HAS WON THE INDY 500.  JOEY INTERJECTS.  “Don’t screw this up, right?”  DID YOU GET A FEELING THE LAST COUPLE MONTHS ABOUT WHAT WINNING THERE MEANS TO ROGER MAYBE MORE THAN YOU DID BEFORE THIS PAST MAY?  “It means a lot.  The Brickyard is the only race he hasn’t won and he really, really wants it, believe me.  We talk about it a lot at Team Penske how bad Roger wants it and what we’ve got to do to try to win that race.  Obviously, there are a lot of unknowns going into that race with the rules package coming up for that.  It’s something I haven’t driven yet or what it’s gonna be like around other cars, so all we can do is prepare the best way we know how and expect the unexpected – be ready for change, be ready for anything just like we were last week.  Last week in Kentucky there were a lot of unknowns and it ended up putting on a great race, I thought.  We had a very fast car.  Both of our Team Penske cars were fast, so anytime there’s a rules change it presents a huge opportunity to take advantage of developing something quicker than the rest of the teams out there.  Eventually, everybody catches up and we’re all running similar speeds, but when there’s a rule change early like that it’s a heckuva an opportunity to try to make something happen.”

YOU DIDN’T GET TO MUCH AT KENTUCKY DUE TO RAIN AND NOW YOU’VE GOT FIVE HOURS.  WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE TOO LITTLE OR TOO MUCH PRACTICE?  “In Kentucky we unloaded pretty good and pretty fast.  Honestly, the car wasn’t driving great, but we were pretty fast compared to the field and anytime you’re faster compared to the field you don’t want to practice anymore because everyone is just gonna keep catching up – not that we won’t get our car better, we’ll get our car better as well, but it’s harder to get the last tenth than it is to find the first three-tenths.  It’s easier to get that, so we were fine with no practice, but I think when we get to Indy I’m sure we’ll all want the practice and understand what we’ve got.  We’ll get behind other cars and see what happens and kind of get a feel for it before the race starts.”

ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE A SHARKNADO WATCH PARTY ON WEDNESDAY?  “It comes out Wednesday?  That’s good to know (laughing).  Yeah, of course (laughing).  Where are we watching?  Where are we going?  I’ve got one big line in that movie.  You’re going to be impressed.  I can’t break it to you, you’ll just have to watch for it.  I’m going to Hollywood (laughing).”

ARE THERE QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT AERO PACKAGES WE’LL HAVE IN THE CHASE?  “Obviously, it’s a point of concern because we want to know as soon as we can, but as hard as it is to be patient we have to be patient.  We have to take our time and understand what makes great racing.  We’re trying things right now.  We’re obviously trying two complete different package at different types of race tracks and trying to make the best races at these race tracks and what that takes.  Obviously, we talked about Kentucky and we didn’t have the full tire that we wanted, we didn’t have the full package and it was better.  I felt like the actual racing was better, so I think everyone likes that.  I feel like that’s a great direction.  Will that be what we go with for the Chase?  I don’t know.  I think we’ll have to wait and see how things are developed into the next few weeks.  I know they had a Chicago test this week and I don’t really know how it went, so don’t ask me questions yet.  But I feel like everyone is working on that.  Everyone is trying to find the right package and the right tire to match up with this package.  I know at Darlington they did a lot of testing with a  softer tire and a tire that had more grip and I felt like a lot of people liked it when they were there at the test.  I wasn’t there, but from what I hear a lot of people liked it and I think it’s just trying to develop that.  It’s a big difference from what Goodyear has been doing, trying to find a lot of grip and obviously have a durable tire.  That’s priority one is not have a tire that blows out, and it’s just trying to find the grip and the fall-off that all of us want.”

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT PASSING AT THIS TRACK AND WHY IT’S SO HARD?  “It’s a difficult place to pass for sure.  You get underneath somebody into these corners and there’s no banking holding you, and your car usually has to be pretty free to get through the center of the corner and when you’re underneath someone you lose the sideforce next to you and you’re trying to drive in there hard and you’re trying to clear them and that’s where you see most of the crashed happen is entry to the center of the corner when somebody is underneath them and they get loose and then they kind of turn up the race track and the next thing you know they get into each other and something happens.  It’s a challenging place.  You can get underneath guys and turn underneath them because you can use some of the banking and stuff and try to get there, but actually finishing off the pass is a challenging place to do it.  In the fall race, we took those four tires late in the race when a lot of cars didn’t get any tires and we were able to pass a lot of cars.  That’s cool to see what tires are worth and that they’re worth something here and you can drive through the field if you’re car is fast enough and it works good enough like we had in the fall race here last year, but it’s tough.  It’ s not an easy place to get around for sure.”

I’M GOING TO ASK A QUESTION ABOUT CHICAGO EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN’T WANT ANY.  HOW DO YOU DETERMINE WHAT TO WORK ON?  DID YOU DO HALF CURRENT PACKAGE, HALF LOW DOWNFORCE?  “It’s hard to do that right now because we don’t’ know.  I don’t think anybody knows what we’re gonna have.  It could be the package we’ve been running all year.  If things work out, it could be the new low downforce package.  If things are great in Indy, who knows what happens?  You’d think that would just stay at Indy and Michigan, but who knows?  There are just so many unknowns right now that you’ve just got to focus on the things that you do know.  Some of the things as far as what it takes to get around a race track like that, what we fought last year, and just keep focusing on the direction we were going and work on parts and pieces of the car that are gonna make your car faster no matter what the aero package is.  There are parts on your car that are just gonna make your car faster no matter what aero package you’ve got.  So I think those are things you’ve got to stay focused on leading up to that, and then when the rules change you’ve got to be able to adapt real quick and make those changes and really develop that package as fast as you can.”

DO YOU THINK DRIVERS ARE OK IF THOSE CHANGES TAKE PLACE FOR THE CHASE?  “I would think so.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel like I’d be alright with it as long as we did it right and we had the package developed and we had the tires that were right, and we weren’t rushing into anything.  Yeah, I think it’s fine.  And if we did it right now, I don’t feel like it’s rushing into it. I think we’d be alright. These teams are so good.  A lot of times you can develop this stuff so quickly and the simulation that a lot of these teams have these days, you think about how big of a balance change and differences they have with three different aero packages now.  We unloaded at Kentucky and we weren’t that bad.  Everytihng was completely different and it wasn’t that bad.  It’s like we were way faster than the field.  There were a lot of cars that were about the same speed as us, so that just goes to show how well everyone has developed their simulation process and they can punch a couple aero numbers different in it and pop out still a pretty good setup and still work on the typical things that make a race car go fast.”

YOU AND BRAD WON EARLY LAST YEAR AS WELL.  HOW DIFFERENT IS IT THIS SEASON COMPARED TO LAST?  “I feel like we’re executing great.  We have more top-fives at this point in the season than we did last year.  We have less wins, though, and, really, we all know it’s all about wins but consistency and execution is important, so I feel like our team is very strong.  We need a little bit more speed in our car.  I felt like, not looking at Kentucky last week, but the races before that we were fighting for top-fives and I feel like last year we were fighting for wins.  So we just need to find a little bit more speed.  Last week in Kentucky we had good speed.  We fought for a win.  We’re back to where we want to be.  I was joking I said, ‘We’re back in the late model division.  We’re not in the street stocks anymore.  This is great.’  And that’s what we need to have when the Chase starts.  We need to have that extra speed and back to where we’re winning races and to get to Homestead and hopefully win a championship.  We’ve got to find a little bit more speed.  I feel like our team is in a great spot.  Last week was a good morale booster, racing for a win like that and coming to a race track that we’ve run well at before.  The last two times we’ve been here Team Penske has been great here, so I think it’s all good things.  We’ve just got to keep pushing forward and try to find a little bit more speed, but I feel like overall our team is in great shape and we’re catching up.  We’re running late models again.”

LAST WEEK A LOT OF DRIVERS TALKED ABOUT PUTTING THE OUTCOME OF RACES MORE IN THE DRIVER’S HANDS.  DO YOU THINK REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH IS DONE THERE WILL STILL BE AN ELEMENT OF ENGINEERING IN THESE CARS WHERE IT WILL BE A BENEFIT TO HAVE A STAFF LIKE YOU DO?  “There always will be.  You put a bunch of people and watch a modified practice here.  You put a bunch of engineers and start working on those things a lot, you’re gonna develop the modified a lot better than the next guy.  That’s just the nature of our sport and development and technology, but we did make the cars more challenging to drive.  The cars are sliding around a lot.  You saw a lot of cars spin out because it’s just hard to drive.  Car are sideways, so I think that’s cool.  It puts more of the driver element into it, for sure, but you know there is always gonna be some kind of technology and engineering into a race car, which I think is great.  That’s where the sport is supposed to be as well.  You want a good mix of both.  You want a good mix of the driver and team and engineering and being able to work together.  You want all of that to mix up to be what makes the product on the race track because that’s half the fun.  Half of the fun is talking about how to make your car better and working with your team.  It’s not that much fun if everyone’s car is the same and you just go out there and drive.  You want to be able to work on it.  It’s not just fun for the drivers, it’s fun for the teams.  They want to work and make their cars better.  They take a lot of pride in that.”

YOU HAVE A WIN ALREADY SO DO YOU TRY SOME THINGS THIS WEEKEND FOR THE CHASE RACE, OR DO YOU TREAT IT LIKE A NORMAL WEEKEND?  “I think we need to understand what makes our car good and what doesn’t this weekend, not necessarily playing around.  I know where you’re going as far as trying different things, but I think we have a good list of stuff we want to try in practice coming up pretty soon to try to understand what happens, but I think the big thing is after the race you’ve got to take the time, and just like we do every other race, but really dissect what happened throughout the race, whether it’s strategy or the way the race went, and really understand what was good and bad about your car and why it did that.  This is gonna be an important race when we come back.  This is a very important race when we come back and, like I said, I just love racing here and want to win anytime I come here no matter what, so we’re gonna try to win here like we do every single week.  But we have to really put the time in afterwards like we normally do, but to really dissect what happened throughout the whole race and make sure we take some good notes and understand what we’ve got to do when we come back.”
Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
5-Hour Energy 301 Advance – New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Friday, July 17, 2015

Greg Biffle, driver of the No. 16 Safety-Kleen Ford Fusion , has one career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series victory here at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.  He spoke to the media this morning about a variety of issues currently going on in the sport.

GREG BIFFLE – No. 16 Safety-Kleen Ford Fusion – “This is a fun race track to race on.  That was still a special win for us here, starting the Chase out, and we’re still looking for a little bit of speed.  We feel like we had a decent Chicago test.  Maybe that will transfer over to this race track a little bit.  We’ll try some of the things we tried over there in Chicago that gave us a little bit of speed, but we continue to look for that speed, continue to look for a way to get a win and compete and try to get in the Chase.”

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON WHERE THINGS ARE WITH THE CHANGES IN RACE PACKAGES?  “I’m game for all the changes they’re doing.  All have to say that from the driver’s point of view, just from being behind the wheel at Kentucky, was probably one of the best races that I’ve been in in a long time because we were able to do things we couldn’t do with the car before.  You weren’t stuck behind that guy.  You were stuck behind that guy because you always have been, but not like it was when the downforce was on it, it seemed like.  It seemed like it was a step in the right direction better because the effect of the car in front of you was less than what it was before.  And the speed in the corner was down just a little bit so that you could move around from lane to lane.  It wasn’t so lane specific because the speed was a little bit down, so when the speed comes down a little bit, you can use more lanes and not be at a disadvantage.  We all know that we have to have a lane that there’s not a car in in order to get beside him or pass him.  I thought it was much better.”

WHAT ABOUT INDY?  “I’m gonna reserve my opinion until afterwards because I don’t really think any of us know how it’s gonna act.  I think it’s gonna be exciting.  We saw a little bit of the high downforce – a couple guys did it at Chicago – and it seems like the guy behind, obviously, suffers more with the high downforce with the bigger spoiler, so we still have to go around the corner, but it’s got big, long straightaways, so is that gonna balance out?  We’ll just have to wait and see.”

IN THEORY, THE WAY THEY WANT IT TO WORK AT INDY, IS IT POSSIBLE WHERE CARS WOULD BE ABLE TO COMPLETE A PASS AT THE END OF THE STRAIGHTAWAYS?  “In theory, it is.  What’s gonna be the determining factor is can you get enough of a run, let’s take four cars and put them single-file, can you get enough of a run or be close enough to that leader in the dirty air with the big spoiler, can you be close enough and get enough of a run at him around the corner for it to pay off by the end of the straightaway.  We all know that’s been a drafting race track, so under any rules package clear back to when I first started going there, if you didn’t feel you could get by him, you were gonna get passed by the guy behind you because the minute you pulled out and got beside him on the straightway, it punched a huge hole in the air so the guy behind you passed both of you.  We’ve seen that happen all along, so now with this being more like that, certainly if we see guys get side-by-side it’s gonna be a huge draft, so we’ll have to wait and see on the single car how that transpires.”

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE LACK OF STATISTICS FOR YOU TEAM?  I DON’T GET IT.  “It’s probably one of the toughest things for us to look at.  We look at the same stats you’re looking at and we look around us and the cars we’re racing with and it’s definitely frustrating, but, at the same time, we’re working as hard as we can to try and figure out what we need for speed — hat we have to do with these cars.  To be quite honest with you, we don’t know what to do to them and we don’t know where the speed is at so it makes it really difficult to fix it.”

HOW HARD IS IT FOR YOU TO STAY ENTHUSIASTIC?  “It’s very hard to stay enthusiastic, it is.  I wouldn’t say it’s like one arm tied behind your back, but it is difficult to get dressed, buckled in there, and get out on the race track, but every time we do we’re searching for that speed, so we’re back at the shop working on stuff, we’re testing, and then we’re bringing it to see what it does competing to that next guy.  So it’s not like we’re doing the same thing every week, so every time you climb in that car you don’t expect the same result.  Now if you get the same result, then you go back to the drawing board.  But every time we climb in that thing we’ve got something different, and when that something different puts us in the top 10, then we’re gonna be excited.”

HOW DID YOU APPROACH THE CHICAGO TEST WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF A DIFFERENT PACKAGE?  “We can start by backing up about two months.  We went and tested at Kentucky for three days.  Then we went back with a different rules package and then we went and tested Darlington for two days and now it’s a different rules package, and then we went to Chicago and tested and we don’t know what we’re gonna race there.  So it’s hard for us considering the position we’re in as a team to manage that moving target, but, at the same time, we understand that this is changing around.  Actually, I really like the package that we ran at Kentucky and what we’re gonna run at Darlington and maybe if we tweak on that and that kind of continues to put on good racing, maybe that’s the package that will be going on.  So we stayed on 2015 stuff, just working on our cars, and hopefully it wasn’t the sixth day we’ve been on the race track that we’re gonna race something different, but we don’t know.”

IS IT A HIGHER DOWNFORCE OR HIGHER DRAG PACKAGE OR ARE THEY THE SAME?  “I guess I’m phrasing it wrong.  It really is just higher drag because it does take away a little bit of downforce.  I guess I thought about the nine-inch spoiler being a lot of downforce, but it does have that lip on it and it has that piece on the bumper, so it is actually a little less downforce, but high drag.  What that does is it just blocks the air from the car behind you is all it does, so essentially the car behind you doesn’t have the downforce or the air on it that it does when it has a smaller spoiler, it doesn’t have all that drag effect.”

WHAT’S THE TALLEST SPOILER YOU’VE EVER COMPETED WITH AND WHAT WAS IT LIKE?  “Probably getting close to it.  Probably the biggest spoiler is when we had the eight-inch spoiler on these cars.  That’s probably the biggest spoiler we’ve had and I’m a fan of the low downforce.  Every time we’ve had shorter spoiler or less spoiler, and less sideforce and whatever else and the cars get sliding around a little bit and they’re not as fast in the corner, it’s just better racing and better passing, and it allows you to pass.”

COULD IT BECOME LIKE A FEW YEARS AGO WHERE IT SEEMED LIKE AFTER EVERY PRACTICE GUYS WERE RUNNING TO THE NASCAR HAULER LOBBYING FOR SOMETHING?  “I don’t know if it will get there because we’re too sophisticated now.  I can see different packages for different race tracks, but I think it’s gonna be pretty fair across the board.  You just wish that you could try both packages at the race track in the same weekend to see what works the best and what drives the best, but we’re faced with having to commit and go, but I applaud NASCAR for what they’re doing and to change it up a little bit and give us an opportunity to see what it does.”

THAT WOULD BE AN AWESOME DOUBLEHEADER TO HAVE TWO 100-MILE RACES WITH DIFFERENT PACKAGES.  “I wasn’t gonna say anything, but I said, ‘Do you know what would be perfect at Michigan would be we just run the first half of the race with the high downforce and run the second half of the race with the low downforce and see which half was better.’”

DO YOU LIKE THE IDEA THAT NASCAR IS MOVING TO WHERE YOU COULD HAVE FOUR OR FIVE DIFFERENT PACKAGES?  “I think it’s definitely a bold idea and the way these cars are it gives us that opportunity for having the splitter and the spoiler and being able to adjust those fairly easily to change the package around.  Before that was difficult to do because we had a front valance on it, so you could never change the front downforce by changing that pan and the splitter.  With them being able to change that around from track to track it makes it fairly easy for the teams to switch out as well, so that’s a positive.  I like the idea of changing it around.”

HOW MUCH IS GOODYEAR INVOLVED IN TESTING?  “I think Goodyear is coming around quite a bit on that.  They tested tires at Chicago that came apart about 24-25 laps the tires blistered and split and cords came out.  They are trying tire packages, so they’re definitely involved in this because taking the downforce off of it you’ve got to add a little bit of tire to it to kind of compensate that grip level, and then the grip level will deteriorate because of the tire.  When you have aero grip, it never changes.  Aero grip stays for the whole run.  The tire will give up from the start of the run to the end of the run, so I do like the opportunity that Goodyear has come back and is working on that a little bit.  Back in the old days, so to speak, you had to take care of the tire a little bit on the first four or five laps of that run.  This tire we’re on now, because of the downforce package, you could drive it however you want, it doesn’t matter.  So I like the idea of getting back to that.  And that’s what creates passing too.  The guy who ran harder in the first 10 laps is gonna be going backwards in the next 10 and this guy is gonna be going forward, so it gives that opportunity.”