	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

MONSTER ENERGY NASCAR CUP SERIES: BOJANGLES' SOUTHERN 500

September 2, 2018

Joey Logano

Darlington, South Carolina

THE MODERATOR: We're now joined by Joey Logano, driver of the No.22 PENNZOIL Ford for Team Penske. We'll go ahead and open it up for questions.

Q. Joey, I know obviously first off, for Penske, just to get back to Victory Lane at Darlington after 33 years is a big deal. It's not your car in Victory Lane, but is it sweet to be part of this one‑two finish tonight?
JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, the one‑two is nice. I was racing Larson there thinking, man, it would be cool to be one‑two, but it would be really cool to be one instead of two. But you know, overall, really cool to see the speed in the Team Penske cars tonight. We ran top 5 all night long, so I'm proud of that. Probably more proud of that than the one‑two finish because you're thinking right around the corner here is going to be playoff time, and you've got to have some speed. So I think in the last couple races, Bristol and here, I know they're unique racetracks, but to see the speed and momentum build, that's key right now.
Really cool to see that. I feel like I kind of go back to restarts. If I had a little better restart and be able to hold off and get the second, our pit stop was probably good enough to take the control, and if you had the lead and had control on that restart on the bottom lane, you most likely can maintain the lead and win the race. We were good enough to win the race. Just had to have the right track position at the end.
The pit crews did a great job. It was a total team effort for all of Team Penske. All our pit crews were on it, so that's really good, and our cars were good, as well. Everyone worked to plan and did a good job.
Brad had a good run there the second‑to‑last restart, and he took off like a rocketship, and then we made some adjustments to our car to be able to keep up a little bit the last run just a little bit too late by the time I got by the 42.

Q. Do you feel like as a whole Team Penske is starting to turn a corner headed into the playoffs?
JOEY LOGANO: I hope so. It's so hard to say. When you think of Bristol and Darlington and then Indy, they're very unique racetracks. There's not many of them like it. Which makes them really cool. This part of the schedule, when you think of these three weeks, you've got three of the most badass racetracks there is, so that's pretty neat to be a part of. You know, so I think some of the speed is there.
I thought one of the coolest things today was driving Steve Park's car. That was pretty neat to me as a New England guy and he's up there, too, and to see his name on the car and the car that I remember watching growing up, and to run it here at Darlington was really special. We talked before the race that we wanted to hold up the No.1 that he used to drive in Victory Lane, and gosh, we came close, but that was pretty neat to have him here and give that thing a good run.

Q. As a driver that's not considered part of the big three, do you feel like the field was kind of leveled out, three of the last four winners in the Cup Series have not been Busch, Truex or Harvick? So do you feel like they're kind of maybe a little bit vulnerable as the playoffs are approaching?
JOEY LOGANO: Sure, they should be scared. We're coming for them. (Laughs.) I don't know, they're still really strong teams. But the fact that we can keep up and race them and pass them, that felt good. That's been about a year since I passed one of those cars. So that feels really good the last couple races. I didn't know I could do that anymore. It felt good.

Q. Joey, just curious if you go to Indy next week and you don't have the speed that you've had the last two weeks, do you get nervous then, or do you wait until after Vegas and wait and see where you guys are with your speed, and what do you think you're capable of in the playoffs?
JOEY LOGANO: Like I said, Indy is still a very unique racetrack. I don't know how much of it transfers over. But I do think confidence transfers over, no matter what the type of racetrack is, if you can run well, that momentum and confidence transfers over to any racetrack you go to. That's why you see those big three, they're fast at road courses, they're fast at short tracks, they're fast at mile‑and‑a‑halfs, superspeedways, it doesn't matter, because they're so full of themselves, as they should be. They win a lot of races. They're confident.
You know, I think, like I said, you get some runs like this and you get something to build off of, especially with the pit crews the way they did tonight, that's a really good start.

Q. Joey, I ran into Roger Penske at Gateway last weekend, and he said he was going to make sure that the team took risk over the last few races since you all were locked into the playoffs. Did you kind of feel that way tonight, or was there something else that you guys were building on? And my second question is Keselowski seemed a little bit subdued lately, and I'm just wondering if that kind of fed into your last statement talking about confidence, and when you have confidence, it's easy to exude that, and when you're kind of coming from behind, it's‑‑ you kind of take a different tack.
JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, you know, I consider Brad a good friend of mine, and we talk about a lot of things, and we run pretty similar on the racetrack a lot of times, so our feels and what we look for is pretty similar, and how we feel about our racing, our race cars and what's going on. We're pretty similar.
So I think obviously the both of us have been not as, I guess, confident in the last few months, but like I said, things like this really help build that. Very cool for him to sweep a weekend, though. If that doesn't give you a little confidence, nothing does. Like I said, it's great for them.
I don't remember the second part of your question. You said something else.

Q. About Roger said he wasn't afraid for you guys to take risk over the last few races prior to the Chase.
JOEY LOGANO: I think we took some risks tonight. If you look at our strategy after the second stage, we kept short pitting and basically add a pit stop to the race. That's pretty risky. There's points that puts us in the lead, and it's great track position, but there was points during the run for 10 to 12 laps that you're down a lap and you give up all your track position. So it's a pretty risky move. I'm not sure if any other cars were doing that. I think we may have been the only one, or maybe there was another car. Maybe the 4 was doing the same thing. I'm not sure. Yeah, that was a little risky for sure, but outside of that, I think it's just off of calls and doing calls like that to be able to maybe position yourself to win and get some playoff points.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297