Joey Logano Coca-Cola 600 Media Availability – Speedway Digest

Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Team Penske, stopped by the Charlotte Motor Speedway infield media center before qualifying to talk about this weekend’s Coca-Cola 600.

JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – YOU HAD AN EVENT ON TUESDAY WITH JORDAN DAVIS IN CONCERT. HOW DID THAT GO? “It was incredible. It was our third annual concert for charity. We had Jordan Davis down there, who is an incredible artist. An awesome guy, by the way. A very normal person. You meet celebrities sometimes and you wonder what they’re gonna be like and he is really normal. So, it was great to have that. We packed the house down there with close to 2400 people showing up. I’m proud of the effort from the team to be able to put on an event like that. It’s a lot of work to put on that type of stuff, but obviously it’s worth it. We were able to raise a lot of money to help foster care in the North Carolina region and it was good. You have two missions when you go there. One, is to obviously raise money for foster care, but the other is to hopefully inspire people to make that leap of faith. If they’re on the fence thinking about should we become foster parents or not, hopefully you can push them over the edge a little bit to take that next step. Those were the goals and hopefully we achieved two of them. It was great timing. Everyone knows this week is so busy with so many different events. Every night it seems like there’s an event to go to and something to do. Our community does a cool job of making the Charlotte race weeks like Speedweek in a way. There’s always something to do every night and obviously with the Truck race last night and what we see tonight with the Xfinity cars as well.”

HOW DO YOU PROCESS WHAT HAPPENED WITH YOUR INDY CAR TEAMMATES THIS PAST WEEK AND WHAT THEY HAD TO GO THROUGH? IS THERE A CONCERN OF ANY TYPE OF RESIDUAL IMPACT WITH THE CHANGES HAVING AN EFFECT ON THE NASCAR SIDE OF TEAM PENSKE? “We’re all one team. That’s the way I’ve always viewed it. That’s why we love to support what the Indy Car guys are doing every week and vice versa. We’re in the same building, so there are some shared pieces there. When we go to whatever manufacturing, engineering, those type of things, there are some shared people there. When we see something like that, yeah, does it impact us? Obviously, it’s going to. I think Roger’s comments during the sitdown with Jamie (Little) was everything we needed to hear. Roger came down to visit all of us. He visited drivers and crew chiefs, but then visited the whole team in a Roger type was as you would expect. At this point, it’s unfortunate, but we’ve got to move forward. It’s something that happened and we’ve got to stay out the windshield as Roger always says.”

HOW DOES THIS TRACK COMPARE TO OTHERS AND WHAT MAKES IT GREAT FOR DRIVERS? “It’s become a great racetrack again. It was great and there was a moment in time where everyone was kind of ‘eh’ about it, and that’s really why the Roval started. Now, it’s kind of like, ‘I don’t know if we need the Roval.’ The oval is fantastic. The racing that we see on this racetrack has been great. You look at the start of the Truck race last night, I was up in the booth, and it was like, ‘These guys are racing the heck out of each other,’ and it was really fun to watch. They’re not wrecking each other. It’s not like cautions every five laps like some tracks. It was a really fun race to watch. I expect the same here today with the Xfinity cars and the Cup cars have put on a good race here the last few years as well. It’s challenging. You brought up the surface. It’s definitely on a landfill. It’s bumpy out there. Three and four, it’s rough. It shakes the heck out of you and you do that for 600 miles you don’t feel too good afterwards, so it’s definitely a physical racetrack at this point.”

WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THE ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR A DRIVER WHO WINS THIS RACE? “You want to win every race. All the wins, especially at the Cup level, all of them mean a lot because it’s hard to do. Everyone is so good and our season, if you can have a five-win season, that’s a pretty good season so you lose a lot. You don’t really care where you get your wins. Obviously, when you think of the Coca-Cola 600, maybe there’s a little extra there. It’s kind of like you look at this as one of the top three biggest races of the year that we have, just from a prestige and historic standpoint. This is a really special one to win. I’d like to be that guy. We’ve been close before, but haven’t quite gotten the old Coca-Cola fridge that they hand out to the winners. I get a picture sent to me before every race here because as a Coca-Cola driver they send me a picture of it and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know. I got it. I want to go get it. I understand. Message delivered.’”

IN WHAT WAYS IS THE COCA-COLA 600 STILL A TEST OF MAN AND MACHINE? “A lot of ways. It’s just long, but the track itself has become more challenging, which makes it even more physical for the driver and also the car. Getting shook around things come loose, things happen, things can break. There are a lot of pit stops, lots of them. There are a lot of opportunities for mistakes throughout the event, so it’s just trying to keep your head in the game and keep grinding it out throughout the whole event. You can get knocked down and you have time to get back up and get all the way back through. In today’s day and age, that’s really hard to do at most races because the cars are all so similar and speeds are so similar it’s hard to make your way back through the field, but here there are opportunities to pass, opportunities to recover and when you have a track that is this challenging, where cars are running the very, very top at the wall, the bumps create a lot of opportunities for people to have these big moments and get loose or spin out, wreck. The teams that can just keep going, just keep grinding it out and keep going, you can eventually find yourself back to the front.”

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF YOUR TEAM AS YOU MOVE FORWARD? “I think we’re in a pretty good spot right now. I thought at the beginning of the season our speed was pretty good, but our execution wasn’t there. Now I feel like our execution has become better and our speed is still there. The last few weeks it seemed like we were able to put everything together. Since Talladega on, we’ve been top 10, top 5 car and putting ourselves in position to win multiple times, whether that’s obviously Texas, Kansas, we got ourselves to the front. We needed more speed there, but Wilkesboro last week, obviously the car was really fast there, so I feel like we’ve cleaned up a lot of execution issues that we’ve had, and now I feel like we’re back to where we typically see the 22.”

WHEN YOU GO TO MICHIGAN AND WHAT THAT PLACE MEANS FOR YOUR TEAM AND FORD, HOW MUCH OF AN EMPHASIS IS PUT ON THAT RACE? “No more emphasis than any other race. We try to win them all. It’s not like we say, ‘Ah, this one doesn’t matter. We’ll just coast this one through.’ That’s not who we are. We don’t do that because every race matters, especially with the playoff format we have. Every win, every playoff point that you can get can be the difference at the end of the day, so we don’t really put more into any of them. I will say though that the manufacturers take pride in that trophy that they hand out there to the winning manufacturer, so it’s always a topic of discussion. We go up there early more times than not and go visit Ford headquarters and it’s a topic that comes up. They want that trophy in their main lobby, so when people walk in they can walk by it.”

WE HAVE THREE INTERMEDIATE TRACKS IN THE NEXT THREE WEEKS, IS IT AN IMPORTANT STRETCH FOR TEAMS TO HONE IN ON WHAT YOU HAVE FOR THE POSTSEASON, OR DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE AND THERE’S NOTHING LEFT TO LEARN? “There’s always something to learn. You never get it figured out. Everyone over time with this Next Gen car has honed in on specific things that they know are needle movers with their car setup and fine-tuning it, but you can see how the field is getting closer and closer and closer. We’ve had the same rule package for awhile and the teams have had this Next Gen car for awhile and team members have gone from team to team to team bringing their notebooks, so everyone eventually ends up running something fairly similar and I think we’re kind of at that point. With that said, are there still things to learn? Yes. Are we still trying to find the next little bit? We’re always going to be doing that, but we’re definitely on the fine point stuff, the very small little needle that is a little better. You’ve got to stack up 20 of those to really matter at this point, but it’s not like you get to go test much and go learn any other way, so once you get past this stretch of races, the next time you go to a mile-and-a-half you’re gonna be looking back at Kansas, Charlotte, Michigan – Nashville is kind of it’s unique area of what that really falls into – but you’re gonna be looking at those tracks saying, ‘OK, where do we need to build our setup off of?’”

LOOKING TO MEXICO CITY. WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO EXPERIENCE WITH THAT RACE? “I hope the fans enjoy it. I hope it’s a good turnout. I think there’s no doubt that a lot of times when you step outside of your comfort zone it’s uncomfortable. There’s risk involved, but there’s also high reward for our sport by doing this. Stepping out of what we typically do here in America and going international, it’s kind of a scary thing to do. Let’s be honest. I think everyone in here probably has some concerns of how are we gonna get there? Where are we gonna go? What do we do? I don’t know how to speak Spanish. I don’t know about you guys. I’ll only hang out with Suarez as much as I can (laughing). I don’t know where to go, so I think there’s just the unknown factor is at its all-time high when we go there. I hope it’s all worth it because it definitely is a lot of work. I was at the NASCAR building the other day and they had meetings with the truck drivers and going over logistics on how they’re gonna get everything there. They don’t do that for any other race. This is a very specific thing. I think it could be great. I think NASCAR is doing a good job so far from what I can tell and is covering their bases on making sure that there’s no surprises when we get down there. We’ve got to have our faith in them that they’re doing their job and it all ends up going well. I’m sure it will. I think everyone has been down there enough and talked about things enough that it will go well. Hopefully, the fans enjoy NASCAR racing. That’s what I hope.”

HOW HAVE YOU AS A DRIVER ADAPTED TO THE FORMAT OF THIS RACE AS IT HAS CHANGED TO STAGES? IS IT EASIER NOW WITH THOSE BUILT-IN BREAKS? “I still look at this race and I say, ‘Geez, if you can have a fast car in Charlotte for the Coke 600, there are more points available than any other race you go to.’ So, a fast car pays a bigger dividend throughout an event than anywhere else you go, so if you get that special car, that one that is just lights-out, you can really stack them in. If you have a bad day, you double down on that too. You hope that you’ve got a good car from that standpoint. There are obviously added cautions in comparison to what there used to be. That represents an opportunity for strategy when it comes to you, depending on where the caution ends up – if it’s a few laps before the end of a stage, one of those type of things, or just playing the stage cautions however you flip those or whatever you do. It presents an opportunity to stay more on the lead lap because there are more cautions. Typically, a race this long you’d probably have less cars on the lead lap, where the stages present the opportunity to wave are get more lucky dogs, those type of things. The recovery factor is a little bit higher than it used to be.”

Ford Performance PR