Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Martinsville Playoff Media Availability
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Paul Wolfe, crew chief for Joey Logano and the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Team Penske in the NASCAR Cup Series, answered questions from the media this afternoon about Sunday’s race at Martinsville Speedway and what his team needs to do in order to win and advance to the Championship 4.
PAUL WOLFE, Crew Chief, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – THIS IS A WIN TO GET IN SCENARIO. HOW WILD COULD WE SEE STRATEGY AT THE END OF THE RACE ON SUNDAY? “I think it’s hard to say right now with bringing a new tire to this race, something we haven’t seen yet on track. I think we’ve got to wait and see how some of the practice stuff look and obviously longer stages than we had in the spring race. Are you gonna see guys try to split that stage and all of those types of scenarios, so really it’s hard until we get on track and really see what we have with that tire, it’s hard to make some of those decisions, but obviously at the end of the day points don’t matter a whole lot to a few of us here. It comes down to the end of the race, you’re gonna have to do what you’ve got to do to try to make something happen. I’m sure you can see guys get aggressive, but ultimately until we know what we’re gonna have with this new tire it’s hard to say what that may be.”
HOW IMPORTANT WOULD IT BE FOR ONE OF THE TEAM PENSKE CARS TO GIVE ROGER A GOOD SEND OFF TO THE OFFSEASON WITH A CHAMPIONSHIP? “It’s important every year, really. It’s unfortunate that on the Indy Car side they weren’t able to have more success, but it doesn’t really change what we’re doing. Yes, it would be great and we’re the only team that’s been able to win a championship with this generation car, so it would be big. Unfortunately, as we sit right now neither one of us are locked in, but with that being said, the good thing is we’re both capable of winning at Martinsville. Blaney has done it twice now in this scenario and we have a really strong car in the spring and feel like we’ve really gained more on our short track program throughout this season, so we’re as confident as we can be going into the weekend. With that being said, we’re racing against other cars that this is one of their strengths as well, so it’s not gonna be easy by any means, but that’s where we are at this point in the season.”
YOU AND JOEY HAD SOME TIME WITH THIS NEW LEFT SIDE TIRE DURING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE TEST IN THE SUMMER. HOW MUCH OF A HELP WAS THAT AND DOES IT GIVE YOU A LEG UP FOR THIS WEEKEND? “I wouldn’t say it hurt at all. I think it was a good thing that we got an opportunity to run on it. We didn’t spend much time on it. Obviously, it was one of the option tires. I guess total we maybe did two runs on it and, yes, the conditions are different and the track is different, but we at least have an idea going into the weekend, which, obviously the other manufacturers do as well with having cars at that test. With that being said, I’ve been part of a couple tests, one this year and one last year at North Wilkesboro and as we’ve seen at Bristol with it being very sensitive to weather conditions, ambient temp, track temp, those types of things, there’s no guarantees that what we saw at New Hampshire is gonna act the same this weekend as the temps will be much cooler from what we see right now. I don’t know that we’re gonna get a whole lot of sun either on Sunday at the moment, so track temps down, temperatures only in the sixties, like I said, I’ve been a part of these tests and seen tire wear drastically change based on temperature and we’ve seen it at Bristol as well, so it’s a little bit of a question mark, but that’s what we have to prepare for is the unknown and trying to put our best foot forward with the most educated guess we can of what’s gonna happen and how much does that really change the setup in the car. There are things potentially that you’re gonna do differently if you knew exactly what was gonna happen, so you find yourself making compromises potentially with that unknown.”
IF THE PERSON DOING YOUR TIRE MODELING IS OFF, HOW BADLY DOES THAT UPSET YOUR SIMULATION PACKAGE FOR THE RACE YOU’RE GOING INTO? “It’s very important, obviously, the tire model. We talk about it all the time when you look at simulators and those types of things and what you get out of them, it really depends on what you’re starting with. You hit on one of the most important parts of all of that and that’s modeling the tire and something that I don’t know that we ever get it perfect. You’re trying to get it the best that you can and move forward with it. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of time with this right side tire, which is definitely a little bit unique because many years past I don’t think we’d typically have the same right side tire at Martinsville as we do at Phoenix or New Hampshire. I always feel like it’s been a little bit unique, so the fact that we have tested with this right side and have a lot of experience with it and been able to find good speed and success with it, that’s encouraging, but Martinsville is a little bit of its own animal and when I talk about testing at New Hampshire, to me, that fits more in line of Phoenix, Richmond, those style of tracks, where Martinsville is a little bit of its own animal. I still think there are things that carry over and, like I said, understanding the tire is good. The left side, basically the way I understand it is it’s nothing more than a compound change, so that’s more of a tire wear and how that may affect the run length and how the balance may swing throughout the run. I feel fairly good about what we have in that area, but track temp and those will dictate a lot of what happens to the wear and the run length.”
IF YOU MISS THE TIRE MODEL AND IT SKEWS YOUR SIM, HOW MUCH WILL THAT DESTROY YOUR ABILITY TO COME OFF THE TRUCK FAST AND QUALIFY WELL? “I think it’s probably different. You could ask different teams or crew chiefs and how that may affect them differently. I think my approach and what’s worked for me is not just relying on that, I guess. There’s a lot of different things that I look at and put into our baseline or what we’re gonna unload with each and every week, and trying not to rely on just one tool to solely make those decisions and how we plan. I think over time it averages out to be a better approach for me and not finding ourselves getting way off in left field too much, so just try to keep a balance of what I’m looking at and what I’m using because you’re right, if something is off in the tool that you’re using to prepare, yeah, it could send you down the wrong path real easily and get you off. And with this format of how practice goes and what you’re allowed to change, sometimes it’s hard to get back on the rails if you don’t start off correctly. I feel good about where we’ll be getting going and we’ll be able to get ourselves tuned in from there.”
WE’VE HEARD HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND MAJOR GAINS WITH THIS CAR. HOW TINY CAN GAINS BE TO HELP LAUNCH YOU UP THROUGH THE FIELD? “I agree with what you’re saying that obviously it’s gotten closer and harder, so finding an advantage or speed compared to your competitors the separation is really small. I think even for us and if you look at Talladega last week I feel like with this car and this aero package the Fords have kind of been the superspeedways have been our strength, but eventually guys keep working to try to catch up and I think you can look at the Toyotas and say they have definitely closed that gap. Even the Chevrolets as well, but we didn’t sit on the pole at Talladega. It wasn’t a Ford and those guys had speed, so it’s hard to keep those advantages for very long as maybe everyone thought the Fords had on the superspeedways. It’s really no different where we go now and when we say little changes, yeah, the difference between contending for wins and running in the top five and running 15th is small. Whether that’s something in your setup or your balance of your car, or little aero gains that you’re always trying to find, which that gets harder and harder because we haven’t had any major rules updates or changes. That’s really what keeps somewhat of separation amongst the field is when there are rules changes and when everything is status quo for so long, and then you look at guys moving amongst the garage from one team to the next, which is just part of the sport and how it happens. ‘Well, this is what we did here. These are different areas to look,’ and it just brings new ideas and thoughts and the next thing you know everyone has the same race car. Now, with that being said there is still some differences aero-wise amongst the manufacturers and how the cars react and maybe different setups to go along with that aero package, but the basic thought and ideas of how you approach this car and trying to maximize settings, camber settings, air-pressures, those types of things, everyone eventually gets in that same area and then it’s pushing the limits and finding those limits. Unfortunately, we’ve had some issues here in the playoffs with tire failures and what-not and that’s just trying to find that little bit more. That’s what we’re down to, so it’s pushing those limits without going over them and we’ve had our struggles there a little bit here in the playoffs with that.”
YOU HAVE A GREAT RESUME AT PHOENIX. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP THERE AND WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU EMBRACE AT THAT TRACK? “The first thing is having a good short track program, which where the championship race has been the last few years that’s just fit what we have going on with this car, not that we haven’t had speed on mile-and-a-halves, but our strength has been short tracks, so I think having a great short track package is obviously key to having a shot at it. From there, then it’s just as a company how do we continue to as we talk about trying to find gains continue to ramp up and make sure that we’re maximizing every last little detail on these cars as we get ready for that championship race. We talk all the time about how important winning early in this round is and we’ve been able to do that and this year obviously the 11 has and that just gives you those extra days to go over all the little details. I mean, we have the basics. You’re gonna get all the basics, whether you win earlier or if we win this week, we have the basics, but it’s just trying to cover off on all of those last little details that you can drive yourself crazy working on to make sure you don’t miss anything and have maximized it. From there, then it’s just how you plan out what little bit of practice we do get, which is unique to our schedule. That’s different than what we do every week at this point, so you’re trying to understand how to get the most out of that condition and some of that comes down to how well do your teammates work with you and how do you work as a company, and do you have more than one car in the playoffs, which we’ve seen before here at Penske, but making the most out of the track time that we do have and then as you get into the race, for me, the challenge or the part that I spend a lot of time on as well is the strategy side of it and making sure we’re ready and can respond to anything that comes up during the race as it can change throughout the day. It’s a short race, but there’s still opportunity there to get that right or get it wrong, so there obviously needs to be a lot of thought going into how all of that will play out and understanding that you’re only racing three other competitors and that potentially could change your approach, no different than we talk about Talladega being in this round and how that had a different feel and look to the manufacturers and teammates and who is willing to help who and what you’re willing to sacrifice ultimately at a speedway race that’s in the Round of 8 versus one during the regular season or even just in an earlier round. I think, in my eyes, the race was different last Sunday because of that, so you have to keep that in mind as you go into the race on Sunday at Phoenix as well.”
LOOKING AHEAD TO THE WILKESBORO HORSEPOWER TEST IN DECEMBER. GIVEN THAT NASCAR WANTS TO TRY SOME AERODYNAMIC THINGS AS WELL, DO YOU HAVE A DIRECTION YOU WANT TO SEE THEM OR LEAD THEM TOWARDS TO GET THE SHORT TRACK PROGRAM BETTER? “I haven’t spent a lot of time. Obviously, the horsepower thing has been on the radar for awhile. I’m excited about that direction. I think it’s good. I’m not aware of much of the aero stuff that’s been talked about. Right now, we’re on two different aero packages when we talk about mile-and-a-halves versus short track. We’ve run both packages on short tracks and it’s hard to say that anything has been a big mover on the aero side, but I think with all of this being said, I think we need to keep in mind not one change is gonna be huge. It’s gonna be to continue stacking small changes and directionally making the racing better. I’ve seen comments. Some guys believe we’re not gonna see anything out of the 750, well is it gonna be night and day? No, but directionally as you talk about how you use your tires and manage your tires, those types of things, adding horsepower is not gonna make that worse. It’s not gonna make the wear better, it’s gonna make it worse, which, ultimately, that’s what we’re going for and those types of things, so I’m a fan of continuing to try to move the whole thing forward, but we’ve got to do it in a smart way and understand that not every change is gonna be night and day. It’s no different than we’re trying to find speed in our race cars. It’s about stacking a bunch of small things to get a result and this is no different, I don’t feel like, in the approach and trying to continue to make it better. I’m excited to see the 750 package. I don’t believe it’s gonna be worse and directionally it should make things better. I think we’ve done some good things with tires this year. Goodyear has obviously pushed the boundaries there, and I think, at times, we’ve seen good results because of it, so I’m excited to continue down that path. That’s a tough one and I don’t know that we’re always, as a sport, gonna hit it out of the park on that one. That’s gonna be continuing to evolve and try to figure that out, but I think we’ve gone in the right direction with it as well and I’m excited to continue down that path as well.”
STEVE O’DONNELL INDICATED THAT NASCAR WAS OPEN TO TARGETING AN AREA OR TWO ON THE NEXT GEN CAR TO MOVE IT AWAY FROM BEING TOTALLY SPEC AND SINGLE-SOURCE SUPPLIED, AND MAYBE GIVING YOU GUYS MORE THINGS TO TINKER AND DEVELOP. DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA OR SUGGESTION TO WHAT AREAS THEY SHOULD TARGET? “I hadn’t heard about that, that that was even on the radar to open things back up like that, so I would probably want to put a little thought into that before I answer the question. But as I spoke earlier, I enjoy change. I think it’s healthy for competition. When we talk about different rules packages or things over time that I’ve been in the series it creates opportunity and maybe at times you see some separation and find teams that find the speed right away and others that are working on it. It’s healthy for the competition side of it and I look forward to things like that. Like I said, we’ve gone quite a while now with this generation car with things that have been pretty stagnant, not that the racing has been bad because of it, but I think from the guys that have been in the sport a long time and enjoy that, I think once in a while it’s fun – the creativity side and bring some of that back and giving guys the opportunity to try to make something happen or find an advantage even if it’s just for a short time.”
DO YOU GO BACK AND DIGEST WHAT HAPPENED ON SUNDAY AT TALLADEGA SO THE DRIVER UNDERSTANDS? “We debrief after every race weekend. You have to while it’s fresh on your mind, so we do that typically on Mondays and there was a lot of discussion around it as we know how important this weekend is and looking forward, while things are still fresh we at least got to get a little bit of a download and get everyone’s thoughts and review what did happen, what went wrong because obviously we didn’t get the result any of us wanted or what we expect or thought we were capable of, so, yeah, there was a lot of frustrations that go along with that, which I think you sensed from both of our drivers post-race. But we sat down as a group and look at it all and try to understand what exactly went on. Some things at this moment we don’t understand why guys did what they did and I don’t know that we ever will understand some of it, but we can see what happened and why we weren’t able to do what we thought we were capable of, but that doesn’t answer for everyone else and what was going through their mind at the moment and what they were trying to accomplish. We thought we put ourselves in a good position to the point, but some things just didn’t line up for us exactly and unfortunately we weren’t able to get a win, so, for now, we downloaded on it. We’ve kind of put it behind us. We’ll revisit that in the offseason as far as how we approach the speedway stuff. Like I spoke earlier, there’s definitely not that advantage maybe you would have said we had a year or two ago. I think guys obviously have continued to work hard and there are some that have caught up to us, so it makes it even harder to do the things you want to do when you don’t have an advantage anymore, when you’re accustomed to having that advantage you expect certain things to work and happen and it just didn’t. We’ll be smarter from it. That’s all you can do as a team of this caliber is make sure we continue to learn from it and be smarter and better next time we go to a speedway race. That’s kind of where it’s at and we’ve turned our focus to Martinsville this weekend, which is obviously another great opportunity for both of us.”
RANDOM STUFF CAN HAPPEN ANYWHERE, SO HOW DO YOU LOOK AT THAT KIND OF STUFF AS YOU HEAD TO MARTINSVILLE? “I think you just have to accept that’s gonna be part of it and for sure on the speedway races as long as we’ve been doing this now, unfortunately, it’s a big part of it – the things out of your control. At times, I feel like where we’re at with this car right now on the superspeedways it’s maybe a little worse, I don’t know. Maybe that’s not true. It feels that way to me just because we’ve crashed out of a lot of these and I feel like it’s hard to move past cars, so that’s where the pushing and shoving starts because that’s really the only way to get these cars to move and the minute that starts, that’s when we keep seeing guys get turned around. That’s what causes these wrecks and it happens at the front as much as it does the middle of the pack anymore, so at this stage I’ve kind of just accepted that’s part of it, unfortunately. You try and go out there and get what you can when you can and then it’s just gonna be what it is. Martinsville, obviously, to your point, sure, there are things, it’s tight quarters there with guys racing hard, so there are gonna be things that can happen out of your control, but I think the biggest thing you can do is just go maximize your day, make sure you’re doing everything you can on pit road like we spoke strategy-wise, a little bit of an unknown at the moment. I’m curious to see how practice goes and then we’ll have a rough plan of what we think we need to do as we start the race on Sunday. You’ll have to be fluid with it, especially in this scenario. That day won’t be about maximizing points for us, it will be about winning the race, so your approach could be very different than what ours was in the spring potentially or what other guy’s are, so we’ll adjust on the fly if need be and hopefully we’ll be in Victory Lane.”
WHERE DO YOU SEE AI IMPACTING YOUR LIFE PERSONALLY AND WHERE COULD IT HAVE A BIG EFFECT ON NASCAR PROFESSIONALLY, WHETHER IT’S IN COMPETITION, PREPARATION OR STRATEGY? “Obviously, I’m aware of it. I wouldn’t say it’s a big part of my life at the moment. I think you’ve always got to be open-minded and be prepared for what’s the next new thing coming along and how is it gonna impact us here at Team Penske? To answer your question, it could have an impact on every area. I don’t think there’s one part of the program where it couldn’t potentially impact us. It’s just weighing out in the positive ways or negative ways because there could be things that go both ways on that. I think it’s just continuing as we do with any tools at our disposal here at Penske, you’ve got to continue to be smart with them and maximize them, but understand that there’s not just one tool or one process or idea that’s gonna make it work, and I think as I look at our company and our teams here and how we work together and things we do, everyone’s got a little different approach to things and, at times, it can be frustrating or trying to understand my approach or how I look at a situation versus maybe one of the other crew chiefs, I think it’s healthy to have different approaches and mix it together if that makes sense. That was no different than when Todd Gordon was here and him and I worked close together. We didn’t always have the same approach or see things the same way, but I think we balance each other out pretty well, and I think that’s really what makes the strength of our team here and how everyone works together is having that different thought processes and bringing everyone together and making it all work because there’s not just one individual or one thought or one idea that’s gonna bring success to the company, so as I look at AI I think it could be useful in a lot of areas and it’s something that we’re mindful of and will use it as we see the need for it.”
