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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCENovember 16, 2016Todd GordonTHE MODERATOR: Continuing on, we are now joined by Todd Gordon, crew chief for Joey Logano and the No.22 Shell‑Pennzoil Ford at Team Penske. Todd, welcome. TODD GORDON: Thank you. THE MODERATOR: This isn't the first time you and Joey have found yourselves in the Championship Four at Homestead‑Miami Speedway. Does the win last week at Phoenix impact the team heading into the championship race? TODD GORDON: Well, I think it definitely brings momentum. I think that's something all sports key off of, and we've had great momentum with the Talladega win at the end of the second round, and then to capitalize on a win at Phoenix in the third round, I think it brings us into Homestead with momentum and on the upward track. Q. Can you talk about the history of the two cars that you are bringing this weekend to Homestead? And also I wanted to ask you, with this tire we've seen short pitting at Texas and Chicago; how do you anticipate short pitting playing a role this weekend, and where is your comfort level in how you decide when you're going to bring in Joey to short pit sometimes? TODD GORDON: Yeah, that's a great question. The first one, you'll get a little chuckle out of. We really don't pay attention to car history here. We kind of treat them as a factory. A car can come back and go through the repercussions of getting a media blast to the body cut completely off and come back. I do remember the car number. It's been through a couple wins. 848 is the primary car we're taking. It was our Watkins Glen tire test car, so just a tidbit that‑‑ they go back and forth here at Team Penske from car to car. It's not designated to being just an intermediate car. Good car, new body, new body spec. I really look forward to what we can do with it. As to the short pitting piece, you saw it at Texas. Actually I feel like we got beat by it, had a very dominant car early. Martin Truex ran us down a little bit there in the middle of the race and actually got to our inside and pitted, and that short pit sequence only being a lap, but it got us from the lead to third and took us a while to recover from it. It'll definitely play on this tire. I think you'll see a lot of falloff at Homestead, as well. I go back to we had a competition caution at lap 25 last year, the caution came out at 11, we were one of four cars to stay out and we lost 11 spots. Definitely burned into my memory that we need to be aggressive on the short pit cycle of what happens this weekend. I don't think you'll ever see a fuel run run completely because somebody will start the sequence, and once they do, you have to react to it. I would think that you'll see something similar in the 40‑lap range going forward at Homestead. Q. Joey obviously was excited on Sunday night, but he also talked about kind of how just happy he is and kind of how happy go lucky he is. I'm curious if you see more nervousness in him than we do. TODD GORDON: Really not. I think in 2014 there was when we went through this the first time. Not knowing what to do or what to expect or how it was going to flow out, the championship race, race weekend. This time around I don't see it. I think it's matters as usual. I think the piece that we've had success and we've had speed through the last five races kind of builds your confidence to feel like we just need to go forward and do the things that we've done, and we can be successful. He's focused on that and focused on making sure our weekend runs the way we've run our weekends and doesn't change anything up. I feel a lot of calm from his feedback and what he's saying and what he's doing and the mannerisms. He's all over just making this another race, and I think in a great position. Q. I don't think a Ford has won a mile‑and‑a‑half or two‑mile race with this aero package since Brad at Vegas. Is there any concern, or do you feel like you've done enough to catch up to the competition on the intermediates? TODD GORDON: Yeah, we led a lot at Texas. I felt like we were very strong there. Finished second to Carl on a rain‑shortened race. I'd have loved to have seen where that race went. But I feel very strong about our chances going forward here. I feel really good about the improvements we've made. I felt like at Charlotte we had speed, and we had a tire failure, but showed some of that. We finished well and were second at Chicago on the same tire. We were second at Texas on this tire that we've got at Homestead. I feel like we've been able to battle for it, and we're continuing to make our stuff better. I love our chances going to Homestead. Q. This is obviously the 50th anniversary for Team Penske, and I know earlier this year the team captured the IndyCar Championship. Has there been any discussion about bringing home two championships, including the Sprint Cup Series Championship with you and Joey Logano amongst the team? TODD GORDON: I mean, yeah, definitely that discussion has come up. It's not really a focus, but it's something that would be a great achievement, and we've got an opportunity to follow through on that. Simon did a great job with the IndyCar championship, and it was awesome for them to have an opportunity to race amongst two of their cars to seal the championship in the last race. A great accomplishment on the IndyCar side. Being the 50th year and the celebration it is, and even the paint scheme of all the pictures of memorable positions within the last 50 years of Roger's racing career, you know, it's pretty special to be able to take that to victory lane and would love to do that at Homestead and capture the year as being successful for both sides, and we'd like to do that with the XFINITY car, as well. Yeah, there's been talk of it. It's not the focus. The focus is just to continue to race the way we need to race and do what we have to do to win this race. Q. I also wanted to ask you, the 19 was the only car among the title contenders to test at Homestead last month. How was the decision made to have the two tests for you guys instead, and do you really miss much not being there in this era of all the information that's shared? TODD GORDON: So at the time that the tire test was, both the 2 and us were still part of the Chase. That was leading up to the Talladega race, and we were both in a position where we could transfer. We really break down our testing and look at it team‑wise. Those organizational tests are dictated where you can send one car per organization, and you know what races those are going to be, and we kind of divvied those up at the beginning of the year and share information. I think our engineers work as well together as anybody's out there, and I think team‑wise we work as tightly with the 2 car as any organization out there. That decision was made earlier in the year that they'd get to go there, and we kind of broke up the tracks that we'd get to test at at the beginning of the year and kind of earmark that one for the 2 car. Now, if the position had changed where they weren't part of the Chase at that point, I think we would have had more discussions about it, but Brad and Paul did a great job down there, lots of data, and we were kind of raking over that data as looking through their notes to prepare ourselves. I feel very good about what they brought to us to be able to look forward and use some of what they had to make our program better. Q. Do you feel like there's any sort of disadvantage or worry because you do have two Gibbs cars in there out of the four, and obviously they're very open about sharing all the information and they feel like it's four against everyone. Is there any sort of disadvantage or anything for y'all because Gibbs has two of the four cars? TODD GORDON: I don't see it that way. I really‑‑ I guess if I look at if we were able to carry two cars to the Chase, then there would be some pull as to‑‑ everybody here at Team Penske is on board with making this 22 car as good as it can be, and I'm sure that they do that at Joe Gibbs, as well, but there's got to be some separation and some hold back. There's got to be at least thoughts of I have to race my teammate so how much do I share. I don't know how they handle that. I'm glad we don't have to go through those thoughts. It's a great effort here and everybody is in full support of getting us to victory lane, and whether it's two Joe Gibbs cars or whether it's somebody from any organization, you've got to beat everybody. History has proven you have to beat everybody to win this championship. I don't see it any differently. I'm glad with the situation we've got, and I feel great about our opportunity. Q. Along those lines, you've got four JGR teams, two of their guys are not in the Chase, you've got Brad who's not in the Chase, and then the Hendrick guys. They've got three other cars not in the Chase. How do you strategize to know that everyone is going to be playing odds to make sure that their organization wins a championship regardless of the driver? TODD GORDON: I think you have to just be aware of the circumstances and who you're racing around, but inevitably I think it's going to boil down to those four teams and how they race each other. There are situations that can happen, and you prepare for the ones that you can control. But inevitably there's situations that are beyond your control. Worrying about what other organizations do with their pieces and their teammates I think distracts you from focusing on what makes your team successful. We'll work on what we can do. Obviously we'll try to be aware of what can be happening around us, but the focus will be primarily on how we race. THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us today, and good luck this weekend. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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