Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Goody’s Headache Relief Shot 500 Advance – Martinsville Speedway
Friday, October 30, 2015
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion, has won the last three NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races and six overall this season. He visited the infield media center at Martinsville Speedway before practice to talk about the Chase and more.
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – YOU CAN BECOME THE FIRST DRIVER SINCE JIMMIE JOHNSON IN 2007 TO WIN FOUR STRAIGHT RACES. THOUGHTS ON THIS WEEKEND? “Our ultimate goal is to win the championship and if we can win four in a row, great. We’ve been on an amazing roll here lately, which has been pretty spectacular. This race track has been another good race track for us. We haven’t won here yet in the past, but it’s been a good track for us the last few times we’ve been here. We’ve qualified well and ran up front here in the spring, just didn’t quite have the car good enough to win. If you can win this race, it sets you up so good for Homestead. There’s nothing else you think about after you win this race besides Homestead. The other two races kind of become not very important at all. You don’t really get much out of them because you know at worst you’re gonna finish fourth in points and you have a great shot at winning it because you can focus in two weeks ahead of everybody. So I think the advantage of winning this weekend really helps whoever that is, so we’ll take it one week at a time. We’re not throwing all caution to the wind this weekend. We want to be smart about it. We want to get the best finish we possibly can and do what we typically do every race. We’re not gonna change the way we race. We’re gonna keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing because that’s what works. We found the right recipe, but we’ve got to be pretty smart about it.”
IS THAT A DIFFERENT OUTLOOK GOING INTO THIS ROUND THAN THE LAST ROUND? “I think it is a different mentality because you wanted to win the whole round because those points may mean something at the end of the year. If we don’t make it through the next round to Homestead, it reverts back to points so you’re still racing for something. Obviously, that momentum is very big. That’s very valuable. You can’t just buy momentum out there, so it’s something important you have – that confidence we have in our team right now. But if you’re able to win this, it’s really just all focus on one race coming up. That’s really what happens if you’re able to do it here. Like I said, we’re gonna do what we typically do. We’re gonna show up here to win the race and if we can’t do that, we get the best finish we possibly can and then we’ll move on.”
AT WHAT POINT DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE GOT THE WIND AT YOUR BACK AND CAN’T BE STOPPED, AND ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT ANY RETALIATION FROM OTHER DRIVERS THIS WEEKEND? “To answer the first part of the question about the confidence and momentum, when you feel like you can get to the race track and not necessarily say you can’t do anything wrong, but everyone is more confident in the decisions they make, which is a good thing. Todd is confident in the changes he makes. The mechanics do a great job and my team does a great job on just being confident in the changes they make on the race car and making sure it’s the right way and they know how to do it. It’s just a different attitude when you start to run well on the race track like we have been here lately. That’s a good thing that we’ve got going for us. Like I’ve been saying about the other answer, we’re focused in on winning the race. That’s what we can control. We can’t control anybody else’s thinking or what’s in their mind. We have to think about how we advance and how we win this weekend in particular. That’s what we’ve been focused on all week. We’re not gonna change that.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — YOU SAID YOU ENJOYED SOME OF THE CREATIVE JABS PEOPLE HAVE GIVEN YOU SOCIALLY. JIMMIE JOHNSON SOMETIMES RESPONDS. HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT DOING THAT? “I think it’s funny when Jimmie does that, actually. I think it’s pretty funny. I look at it and don’t really see where it’s worth my time to have to stand up for myself for one of those haters. I’ve got more important things to do with my life than do that. Yes, it’s fun sometimes when you write back. Some of them are just so lost. They’re just so far out there. It’s like, ‘You have no idea.’ And I just think, ‘No, it’s not worth it. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.’”
SAFER BARRIERS ARE ALL AROUND THIS TRACK. WILL THAT CHANGE THE RACING LINE OR HOW YOU SET THE CAR UP? “It’s hard to answer that question without being out there yet, but I do believe it will change some things. You take three feet away from a race track, we use every inch there is. We get right up against the wall, so that does make it a little tighter. I don’t know if it’s gonna change the racing a whole bunch. It might. You would think the line, obviously you’ve got to cut the corner off a little bit more on the exit. I don’t think it’s gonna change some peoples’ lines, but other people it will change their line. This is a race track where drivers run it two or three different ways and I think some people it may affect more than others.”
WHAT IS THE MENTALITY SWITCHING FROM A SUPERSPEEDWAY TO SHORT TRACK? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO GET OUT OF IT? “We’re hoping to win. That’s what we’re trying to get out of it this weekend. It’s a completely different mentality than what we did last week. That’s the beauty of NASCAR. We get to do something different every single week. We went from the largest track to the smallest track one week after another. How cool is that? That’s pretty neat that we can go to different extremes in one week, and as a driver you have to be ready for some change, ready to do things differently than you did the week before or the previous weeks. As a race team you have to be thinking differently, so I think that’s something that adds a lot to our sport when you can go to a completely different race track. It’s not like we run mile-and-a-half after mile-and-a-half after mile-and-a-half. Usually, there’s something splitting those things up that keeps you on your toes. If you kept running the same type of track over and over again you can really focus in and build off of it, but when you’ve got to think about a race track that’s completely different, a lot of times it kind of mixes it up for you and makes it a little bit more challenging for the race teams.”
IN THE SPRING YOU GOT THE POLE AND HAVE BEEN CLOSE HERE BEFORE. HOW SIGNIFICANT WAS THE DIFFERENCE HAVING THE NUMBER ONE PIT STALL AS OPPOSED TO THE OTHERS, AND WHAT DID YOU TEST AT ATLANTA THE OTHER DAY? “To answer your first part about pit stall one, super-important. I was re-watching the race last night and we were able to start first here in the spring and just to see the advantage you get on pit road on exit there for multiple reasons, there are a lot of reasons that pit stall is good this week, so qualifying here is very important. Obviously, we think a starting position here and how hard you’ve got to run your car early in the run if you’re not towards the front to maintain being on the lead lap, and then you burn your tires off and you fall off pretty hard. So starting towards the front really helps your whole race and then when you have a good pit stall if something does happen during the race and you lose your track position, you rely on the pit crew a lot of times to get a few every time you come down pit road and if you can help them out with a great pit stall, here probably pays bigger than most race tracks that we go to.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT THE NUMBER ONE STALL HERE? “The camera line is right in front of it, so you don’t have to go very far. The overall time on pit road is pretty quick. The safety of being way down there on the other end helps and really, to be honest with you, a lot of guys count cars here down pit road and want to make sure they’re in the right lane to restart. If you can see that as the leader, as the first guy, you can see it a little bit better and understand it, so I think there are a lot of different advantages to the pit stall one and probably larger here than most places.”
AND THE ATLANTA TEST? DID YOU RUN ’15 or ’16 STUFF? “We ran the ’15 package down there. We still have Texas coming up. We’ve got Homestead is also another fast mile-and-a-half and we want to win a championship this year. We can worry about next year next year. Right now, 100 percent effort is into this year.”
WHAT KIND OF DISTRACTIONS DO YOU HAVE HERE COMPARED TO TALLADEGA? “You’ve got a lot going on on pit road. I think it’s 35 (mph) here. You don’t think you’re going very fast, but there are a lot of things happening very quick and it actually feels like you’re going pretty fast because there’s so much going on. You’ve got to think about the car in front of you, where he is pitting and make sure you’re not gonna collide down pit road on where he pits to where you pit and make sure you position yourself in the right spot with him in front of you. I think you’ve got to realize on pit road where you can push it and where you can’t. There are certain areas and certain timing lines that you can push more than others depending on where you pit, so understanding that and then just maxing pit road speed out – looking at the tach and then you’ve got to find your pit stall on top of all this. There are so many pit signs and so many pit stalls that you’ve really got to know what your pit stall looks like and what your pit sign looks like and know where you’re at. It’s easy to drive by a lot of times. It’s easy to drive right by your stall and obviously the faster pit road is the quicker all this happens, but a lot of times it’s a tight pit road as well. You think about when you’re pulling out and there are other cars pulling out in front of you, and you’re looking at your tach and the next thing you know someone is in front of you, so you just have to be able to multi-task a lot down pit road.”
