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NASCAR SPRINT CUP SERIES: IRWIN TOOLS NIGHT RACE

August 22, 2015

BRISTOL, TENNESSEE

THE MODERATOR: We'll continue out with our post‑race press conference. We are now joined by our race‑winning crew chief Todd Gordon and vice‑chairman of Team Penske Walter Czarnecki. Team Penske the heavy favorites tonight. Tell us about your team's preparation and the ability to find victory at the end of the night.
TODD GORDON: Yeah, I felt like when we came in the weekend, this is one of those racetracks that once a driver and a team figures out what they need to be successful, you can focus on that, and in practice we weren't necessarily the fastest car here but we had pretty good speed, and we had the right balance, and that's something that we build off of and felt like in happy hour we really hit on something. We worked on that, and obviously qualified‑‑ we didn't qualify on the pole but we had a flat tire in our first session so I thought that was a really good recovery for the guys, have a right rear going down and figure out how to get through the round to get another tire on, and a fifth‑place qualifying effort was an accomplishment for the team and what they did. Pretty proud of everybody there and pretty proud of the execution tonight.
Joey definitely had lung‑run speed, and those couple long runs where it went almost 100 laps, we were really strong in the last half of it.
THE MODERATOR: Walt, this is the team's second win in three races. Talk about the team's performance and the win here tonight.
WALTER CZARNECKI: Well I think the resurgence, I'll call it, after the first third of the season which was pretty good after Daytona of course, went into a little bit of a dry spell but I think from a Team Penske perspective, things started to come together at Kentucky and I think that for those last six races now we've been in contention, we've won two of them and had the real opportunity to win those races, as well. I want to congratulate Todd and Joey, of course, for what they did tonight. Talking to Todd before the race, I told him upstairs a minute ago that he exuded a confidence and a sense of preparation that we were going to be able to compete and compete effectively.
They executed and demonstrated it beautifully.

Q. Todd, was that the best race Joey has ever driven?
TODD GORDON: Wow. He performed flawlessly. Best race he's ever driven? I don't know, Daytona was pretty phenomenal. But it was a typical Joey Logano performance. As I said in victory lane, I'll put the analogy to basketball, but there's only certain a handful of guys that want to have the ball in their hands with three seconds left on the shot clock, and Joey is that guy. When it comes down to the time to make it happen, he elevates, doesn't make mistakes. I think Kevin challenged us pretty formidably, and Joey never folded, never made a mistake and did what he had to do and executed, and that's a Joey Logano performance. I don't know that I'd call it his best performance. He's had a bunch of really good ones.
WALTER CZARNECKI: Todd, one word came to me watching those last 50 laps. The word was poise. He just didn't lose his composure. Using Todd's analogy, Todd handed him the football, and he found the holes.

Q. Team Penske has now won three of the last five night races here at Bristol. What do you attribute that to, and do you think it is because of the poise that Brad and Joey both exhibit in the night race?
TODD GORDON: I would say that we've got‑‑ this place to be successful here takes the complete package, and there's several opportunities to make mistakes, and if you execute, you can be successful.
But both of our drivers challenge each other. I think when you look at our setups, we build off each other. I think to the point of it is Team Penske. We share a lot of information between the two teams, and when you've got two teams attacking it and two drivers like we've got, Brad and Joey are both phenomenal race car drivers, and they challenge each other but constructively. I think that's a key to our success, and here it's something we all work together for a common goal. Last year we were 1‑2, and tonight we were 1‑2 for a while. Didn't end up being that way. But we all work together, we understand what it takes to be successful here, and we work on it.
WALTER CZARNECKI: There's a great heritage in Team Penske with this place beginning with Rusty Wallace and Rusty had some great runs here. He had some runs where he should have won and things occurred at the end but be that as it may. So I think Bristol has always been right at the top of our hierarchy of important races if you look to the schedule. To me personally, winning the Daytona 500 is huge. That's No.1. But the Bristol night race is right there with it in my view. And I think the whole organization feels that way, but I think it really began with Rusty and the way Rusty would focus on this event when he was driving.

Q. Todd, you know how critical it is in the pits. We saw a lot of loose tires tonight. How much has this lug nut rule that they instituted of late had to do with the rash of lug nut incidents that we have seen in the pits with the loose tires and everything? It cost a lot of people tonight.
TODD GORDON: Yeah, I think it may be a factor in it. This place itself is rough on wheels. It's just a place that you've got so much lateral load in the car and there's so much drive and brake, it's 500 laps of a lot of load on especially the rear wheels, so you'll see‑‑ if you're going to have a weakness, if you're borderline on having wheels torqued every week, it's going to show up here. You've got a lot of gear in the car and you've got a lot of acceleration, a lot of deceleration, a lot of lateral load. It's a really, really high lateral load place with all of the banking that's in the corners and running right up there in the grip strip up there at the wall.
I'm sure that the lug nut rule has a slight impact on that, but I'd say there's a bigger impact of this racetrack is just rough on rear wheels.

Q. Todd, we saw some cars that were quick on short run and fell off on long run. Other people were slow on the short run but picked up speed on the long run. You've all theoretically got the same tire compound. How can you explain that some people run faster at the beginning and others run faster at the end?
TODD GORDON: Yeah, there's several factors that play into that. I think it's air pressure and tires, it's camber settings and tires as to what you're doing making short‑run speed versus long‑run speed. I think how your splitter is off the racetrack. When you see tires build up through‑‑ you look at these cars and the rotors are glowing in them, and glowing rotors are 1,300 ‑ 1,400 degrees, so there's a big heat source in the middle of it which builds the tire pressure up a bunch. As the tires build up, then the whole ride height of the car comes up, and if the splitter is on the racetrack, it makes them tight. So there may be guys that early in the run they're on the splitter and they just can't turn the way they need to to make speed, but as the tires build up from the rotor heat and just from the grip heat, that splitter comes up and gets to a happy spot and then their car works. You'll see that. That's stuff we all work on as race teams as to how we feel the race strategy will play out to long runs and short runs of whether you want to be good in the short run or good in the long run. I felt like the Gibbs cars were a little quicker than we were firing off, but about 50 laps in we could run them back down, and we just‑‑ I feel like there's several pieces there we had different philosophies on.

Q. We've all talked about how sometimes people forget that Joey is just 25 because he's actually had so many years in the Sprint Cup Series, but in the progress that he's made in the relatively short time that he's been at Team Penske and the work that you two have done together, is it hard to get a grasp on what his potential may be?
TODD GORDON: It's exciting to get a grasp on what his potential could be. He is 25 years old, but he's much mature beyond that age. Got put in a Cup car at 18, so he's 25 years old with seven years' experience of understanding what it takes to be successful, and made the Chase now all three years at Penske.
And executing. I think you saw that in his Nationwide performances before he got here that he was a closer. He's so mature beyond his years at 25, I'm just thrilled what the future brings for us.
WALTER CZARNECKI: I think that Joey has a great sense of self. He does not have an inflated‑‑ in my view doesn't have this inflated image of himself. He knows what his limitations are, he stays within his limitations, he listens to people like Todd because he knows they have his welfare at heart and he doesn't extend beyond it. I think it's interesting, just an observation I shared with someone a few minutes ago that when I listen to the dialogue between Todd and Joey during the race, Joey doesn't say a whole lot if you listen. He knows that he's executing. He has a great deal of confidence in Todd, so that's a person who's got a great‑‑ as I said, a sense of self, that he doesn't know better, he realizes he's part of the team and he's not trying to extend beyond it.
Having said that, he has tremendous potential. Tremendous potential. But right now I think we're going to worry about Darlington, right?
TODD GORDON: We're going to work on Homestead test on Wednesday, and then we're going to worry about Darlington.
THE MODERATOR: Walt and Todd, thank you for joining us tonight, and congratulations.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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