Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Daytona Road Course Media Availability | Friday, February 19, 2021
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang — IF YOU WERE A FAN WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT THEM TO TUNE IN THIS WEEKEND? “Probably the unknown. It’s usually why everyone wants to watch live sports for. If you’ve got a racetrack where it’s a road course, we’ve seen them go so many different ways. You have races with fast cars and just the fast cars up front, but you have strategy and cautions that come out in different places and a lot of different things. Honestly, after watching the Clash there was a lot of excitement in that race. You’re probably gonna tune in to watch another one at that track.”
HAVE YOU WATCHED A REPLAY OF THE FINAL LAP FROM SUNDAY? “Of course I did.”
AFTER HAVING WATCHED IT DO YOU SEE ANYTHING THAT COULD HAVE GONE DIFFERENTLY? “There’s always gonna be things that you see that you want them to go differently. You can’t change it now though, that’s the bottom line. I look at it and see that, in my opinion and everyone is gonna have one, but mine is that I’m up in the mirror and I’m watching this all develop behind me. When the 34 and the 2 hook up they start coming at me with a run, I throw a mild block, but when Brad moves to the left to pass me that gets the 34 off-center on his bumper. These cars are very unstable when they’re getting pushed. It’s not like when we used to tandem, when we had a pair of 400s across the back. There’s not much mechanical grip in our cars anymore because of the lower ride heights, we’re trying to get the spoiler out of the air, all that stuff to make speed. So, for those reasons, when a car gets off-center as much as McDowell was on Brad, it’s gonna push him around, just the same way like we saw the first crash happen. At that point, from watching it in slow motion and trying to dissect it, I see Brad hands turn to the left and the back end of his car is further left than he is, so that means he’s going to the right at that moment spinning out. That’s why I got tagged so hard in the left-rear and spun me out so quick. That’s how I see it happened. It’s quite the bummer that it happened because you’re so close to winning the Great American Race and you think 30 laps before that you’ve got four Fords behind you being your teammate, and everyone is working together. You think everything is gonna be fine. You’re pretty stoked about the situation. It’s kind of the best scenario you can possibly be in for the last 30 laps of that race, and then once I saw Brad lay back and shuffle the 4 out I said, ‘OK, this game is about to change. This isn’t going the way I would expect it to,’ and I knew that things were gonna be a little different and that’s what kind of developed in the last few laps. Cars were laying back so much trying to form runs. I’m backing up trying to keep everyone tight behind me and not get so far out because everyone is checking up behind me trying to form runs that you just know there’s so much energy being built up. Everyone is gonna be bumper to bumper and you saw that all come to fruition when we went down the back straightaway and everyone opened it up. You saw some cars on the bottom of that top lane had five cars pushing each other. There’s gonna be a few runs coming at you that way, so that’s just how it ended.”
DID EITHER OF YOU DO ANYTHING WRONG? COULD IT HAVE BEEN PREVENTED? “I don’t think anyone did anything wrong. Everyone is gonna have different perspectives and I think that’s probably where we’re gonna be. To me, the biggest heartbreak of this whole thing is that there are 400 people at Team Penske asking where their Daytona 500 bonus is and it’s up in a ball of flames up in turn three right now. That, to me, is probably the hardest part to deal with because those families put just as much into it as I do, and I learned this the most when we won the championship in 2018. At this victory tour we went to a lot of different places and met a lot of people and didn’t understand how much we affected people’s livelihoods and when I realized that it kind of changed my thought process a lot on what I do behind the wheel. So, that’s probably to me the most frustrating part and they should be frustrated too about it. I’m angry about it, so that part is probably what stings the most is that we had a really good shot at having a Penske 1-2 and, instead, we finished 12th and 13th.”
YOU HAVEN’T TALKED TO BRAD YET. IS THAT BECAUSE YOU PROBABLY KNOW WHAT HE’S GOING TO SAY? “I think it’s probably best to cool you jets a little bit before the conversation happens. I’m sure you were just listening to me on the radio a minute ago. I think everyone cooling off is probably gonna be good, but the analogy I used on Sirius a minute ago was it’s a marriage. When you’re married to somebody, you have to figure it out. You’re married. You don’t just leave. You get married. It’s supposed to be forever, so when you have conflict or you have a difference of opinion, you have to talk about it. You can’t just roll it up under the rug. It’s just not gonna work. It’s not healthy. People do that, but it’s just not healthy to do. So, it’s kind of the situation here, where I will be forced and he will be forced to work with me. We’re still teammates. We will have to figure this out. We may not have to agree on everything, but we at least have to find a way to move forward, and that is gonna be the approach we need to do because going back to the 400 men and women who work at Team Penske, we owe it to them to figure this out, and we will fix it and it’s fine. Like I say, you can look at this thing three different ways. There’s gonna be six different opinions on how the last few laps went and depending on what seat you’re in you would pick differently, so it’s just a matter of talking it out and there’s time before Sunday’s race to do that, so that’s kind of where I’m at with it.”
SO YOU’LL DO IT BEFORE THE RACE ON SUNDAY? “Oh, yeah.”
WHAT IS IT WHEN YOU TALK TO BRAD THAT YOU WANT TO HEAR OR YOU WANT TO GET ACROSS? “It’s maybe not what needs to be said it’s what’s the goal on moving forward. The goal is to move on and not say, ‘You raced me hard, so I’m gonna race you hard’ and now we’re beating the doors off of each other every week and it grows and grows and grows. That’s the goal that you can’t have. You can’t seek revenge or just, ‘Well, you made my life hard, so I’m gonna make your life hard.’ That’s childish. We’re adults. We’re not doing that. I’m not gonna do that for a multiple of reasons. For one, like I’ve been saying over and over again, if you do that, it’s the most selfish thing you can do because you’re not just hurting yourself or hurting him, you’re hurting all the people that work on that car and what did they do to you? They’re the same people that work on my car by the way, so it’s a matter of just saying how do we move forward, not you did this, you did this, you did this. It’s, ‘OK, that’s that.’ Start at zero. Clean slate. Never to bring up anything that’s happened six months ago, a year ago, five years ago. If you want to talk about it that is the time. The best time to talk about it, bring it up, be honest, get it off your chest. If you need to get it of your chest because it makes you feel better, good. That’s gonna be healthy, but after that it’s never being brought up again. Never. It’s got to start at zero. You can never go back and say, ‘Well, this year in the Daytona 500 you did this, or you did this to me six weeks ago over here.’ Come on. What are we, two? We’re not gonna do that and that’s the goal to get to is just to move forward.”
THE TIRE AND AERO PACKAGE ARE DIFFERENT FOR THE ROAD COURSE THIS YEAR. HOW MUCH WILL THAT CHANGE THE RACING? “For one, it’s gonna make it better. I think we all agree that the Clash was definitely better than the first race with the big spoilers there. The big spoiler makes it hard behind a car. The Clash, there’s probably a couple reasons why you saw a couple cars go off the racetrack. For one, a lot of them are starting on older tires, so it’s really hard to judge what your grip level is on cooler old tires, so trying to figure out what that is is very challenging. And, two, it’s the Clash. Everybody is out there saying, ‘Go.’ What have you got to lose is the Clash. It’s an all-star race. If you crash, you crash. Oh well, you go onto the next one. Did you learn something? That, to me, is the most important thing, and I think everybody has that mentality or at least most of the cars do, and that’s why you saw such hard racing. You saw rotors glowing like you wouldn’t believe. Those things are what makes an all-star race like the Clash really entertaining and fun, not only for the fans but for the drivers because you just know that guy is gonna send it in there because if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Oh well, you learned where your limits are and what to do with it when you get back for this weekend.”
WHAT IS IT ABOUT HOMESTEAD THAT APPEALS TO DRIVERS AND WILL IT BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME OF YEAR VERSUS THE END OF THE SEASON? “No. We kind of raced this time of year last year, maybe not this time but more towards the summer, compared to being the last race of the year. I think every driver loves that racetrack. I do. It’s fun because it’s wore out, so the cars are sliding around a lot and it’s wide. You have options. You’re not just stuck in one lane. You can go to the very, very bottom or, like Larson does and Reddick does and those guys that are really good at running the wall, way up there and they’ll zing the top and be going for a while, and you can go in-between — wherever people want. I think as a driver that’s appealing, it’s fun. If you overcook your tires, you’re gonna pay the penalty and I think that’s kind of fun because it’s a balance of aggression and patience and managing those things. I think that makes it a good time and restarts just become nuts because the track is so wide.”
WHO HELPED YOU WITH YOUR ROAD COURSE RACING SKILLS? “A few people. Max Papis is the first one that comes to my mind that helped me a lot, probably the most, and not just in road racing but just in general. I think he’s just helped me as a person a lot, so I think that’s the guy that stands out the most to me. I know he helps William a lot now, too. You guys all know Max and know how he is. Probably the moment that has taught me the most from Max is we had a two-seater Cup car at Road Atlanta, and this was years ago when you were able to test. I rode in the passenger seat with Max, which is hands-down the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but he brakes three car lengths deeper than me and I thought I was getting all of it. When he did that, for one, my feet were going through the floorboard on the passenger side, but it was kind of an eye-opening thing where it’s like, ‘Braking is where the speed is.’ I had to get better at doing that. I don’t think he said it at that moment, but he said it without saying it and I think those are the things, to me, that has helped a lot. That and his mentality and who he is has helped me a lot.”
FROM YOUR VOLUSIA EXPERIENCE HOW MANY TEAR OFFS ARE YOU GOING TO WANT AT BRISTOL? “Well, the problem is we’ve got a windshield, so it’ll be a little different. It’s funny, before the Volusia race I was sitting there talking to David Stremme and his wife and my helmet was sitting on top of my car and he goes, ‘How many tear offs do you got in there?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know, I think I’ve got like eight on there.’ And it was a 15-lap race maybe, a 10-15 lap race. It wasn’t long and they were laughing. They said, ‘You better put more on there.’ I was like, ‘Really?’ So I put another pack of 10 on there and by the end I only had three left or so, so I was like, ‘Wow, you use a lot of these things.’ It will be different at Bristol because we can’t have a real tacky racetrack, a real muddy track because you have windshields and I cannot physically reach out there and pull my own tear off, so it’s gonna have to be dusty and dry.”
YOU’VE WON THE OPENING RACE AT LAS VEGAS THE LAST TWO YEARS. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT LAST YEAR AND THE ROLL YOU’RE ON THERE? “It’s really important for us to run good there. The Pennzoil 400, so it’s a very important one to win. The goal is to do donuts through the grass on the Pennzoil logo. I’ve said that the last two years when I saw everybody before the race and was able to accomplish that, so the goal is no different. They expect it at this point now, so we’ve got to go out there and have a good run at Vegas. By the stats I think it’s my best racetrack or at least close to it. In the past it’s just been something that I think early in my career when I didn’t run good anywhere my first top 10 was at Vegas, or one of my first. It’s been a racetrack that I took to fairly quickly, so that on top of Penske bringing really good cars there. You look at what my other two teammates, Brad and Blaney, have been able to do there. They’ve been pretty fast there and capable of winning plenty, so I think you kind of put a couple good things together and see some good results.”
WHAT DOES IT DO FOR A TEAM TO WIN EARLY IN THE SEASON? “It’s nice. It’s a confidence-builder. It’s nice to get that out of the way. It’s nice to know you’re in the playoffs. It’s not like it used to be where the rest of the races doesn’t matter a whole bunch because you’re in the playoffs and you just move on. Now, every race means something. Every race you have to run hard. You have to get some points because one point could be the difference of making it to the next round or the difference in winning a championship or not, so you have to race every race so hard. So, it doesn’t really change your mindset after you win, it’s just kind of a comforting thing and winning feels nice. That’s the best part about this whole thing, so it’s just nice any time of the year. You want to win every one of them that’s there.”
WHO IS MAD AT WHO HERE? ARE YOU MAD AT BRAD? IS BRAD MAD AT YOU? ARE YOU BOTH MAD AT MICHAEL? HAVE YOU TALKED TO MICHAEL? “We’ll have to find out, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not mad at Michael. Michael had a run and got pushed to Brad and hooked onto the back bumper of him. That happened because Brad backed up to him, so I can’t be mad at that. Honestly, I’m happy for McDowell. The guy is a grinder. He’s been grinding his whole career and he finally won one and it’s the biggest race ever. I’m ecstatic for him and he should be over the moon. Yes, we’ve talked to each other quite a bit the last few days, texting back and forth. He brought it up. He was concerned, ‘Did I do something wrong? Is everything OK?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, going for the win. I get it.’ He had three other cars bumper to bumper behind him because of the situation that was happening, so you can’t blame him for pushing. He was gonna get pushed if he didn’t push, so it’s just part of the race.”
HOW TOUGH IS IT TO JUDGE THOSE RUNS BECAUSE WITH THIS NEW PACKAGE THEY’RE COMING AT YOU SO QUICKLY? “It’s not that hard to judge a run. You see it all happening. If you’re got a good spotter and you’re a good drafter and see it in the mirror happening, you see it happen before it happens. You know it’s coming. It’s not like you’re looking and, ‘Oh my gosh, here it comes. Where did that come from?’ At least for me, there’s never a moment that surprises me in the draft, unless it’s someone tags somebody the wrong way and starts a crash or something like that, but the runs themselves aren’t surprising and I think that’s just years of experience at this point, it’s having a good spotter on the roof that’s feeding you the information that you see it coming before it happens. That doesn’t mean you can defend everything and stop everything, but if you know it’s coming, at least you’re prepared for it.”
DID T.J. CHANGE THINGS FOR YOU WHEN YOU TWO GOT HOOKED UP? “Yeah, you know what, we had a couple different outlooks on things and I think you put two experienced drafting people — driver and spotter together — you’re gonna have good results. I like that he brought a couple different perspectives to me that I didn’t really think of, and I think I was able to do the same for him and I think that’s made us stronger. We have a couple different opinions on how things would work in the draft. Now we’re on the same page obviously, but it was fun the first two times watching races with him saying, ‘Why did you do this?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, because of this and this and this.’ And he goes, ‘Well, watch a few laps.’ And you kind of see it develop and you’re like, ‘Oh, I should have done that. You’re right.’ It’s kind of fun to see that happen. We were able to teach each other a couple different things.”
