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NASCAR CUP SERIES: FANSHIELD 500March 8, 2020Joey LoganoAvondale, Arizona THE MODERATOR: We are joined by our race winner, Joey Logano, driver of the No.22 Shell‑Pennzoil Ford. This is Joey's second win of the year. We will open it up to questions. Q. (No microphone.) JOEY LOGANO: First off, I hope this term 'awesome sauce' is really kicking in, like it's going to work (laughter). Boy, hats off to NASCAR for collaborating with the teams, the track, and ultimately putting on a way better race than what we saw here last year, which is a combination of a lot of things that made it a lot better. Obviously the smaller spoilers allowed us to race, a softer tire, had more falloff, and then with the awesome sauce up top, it really put an extra wrench into the race to where we showed up here saying I don't really know what we're going to do. Even before the race, I was like, Well, I don't know how this top is going to work out, if it's going to wear out, what is going to happen on the long runs, short runs, restarts. There's so many unknowns. Those unknowns made it a great race. Even as the teams figured it out throughout the race, it still produced good racing where cars were able to pass, get close to other cars, do things. Just a way better short track package than what we had last year. Works good for racetracks like we're going to next week. At a place like this, I think we saw the complete opposite. This is working well. Q. Did it work about the way you expected? I saw you Friday night, I can pass. Was there any part of this that surprised you or was unexpected? JOEY LOGANO: Not a lot. When we were here last year, I felt like it was applied pretty light, whereas it was a lot thicker this time, stickier. I think that really made it come in. They did a good job keeping it pretty clean throughout the races. After the Xfinity race to today, they did a lot of work to try to clean it, which is key. That's kind of the biggest problem with this stuff, is all the dust and little rubber marbles, everything that comes off our cars used to go all the way to the wall, now it gets stuck to the racetrack. Walking out of the pit boxes before the race, it rips your shoe off. It's the same stuff on the racetrack. It catches every little piece of dust there. I felt like they did a good job last night or this morning, whenever they did it, just scraping off all the garbage for lack of better words on the racetrack, being able to keep it clean to where it came in pretty quick in the race. It was the dominant lane at times, but it wasn't like the bottom was so bad that you couldn't do anything. It was just the right amount. You don't want to make it the dominant lane to where you can't pass because everyone is stuck up top. You don't want that either. It's kind of a combination of both. I thought they nailed it for the distance from the bottom and all that. I thought it was really good. Q. As Bud Denker was in here earlier said you're batting .500. Is it pretty remarkable despite changing teams here you sit two wins out of four races this year? Pretty stout. JOEY LOGANO: It's nice. It's early. It's early. A lot of things can happen. I feel like Paul and I and the engineers have really have an open line of communication which has been nice to where, hey, if any of us feel like we're failing in a department, we're going to say it. I'm good with that. They're not the most fun conversations but we're going to talk about it, whether they think I'm driving the car wrong, something I need in the car, it's open. I think that's what's made us strong so far. I think that we kind of set that as the standard to start this relationship, is that we need to be open, leave our feelings at the door. It kind of seems like that's the way it's been, which is good. A lot of runway ahead of us still to be better. The races that we've won, today we were pretty quick, and we were pretty quick in Vegas, but neither one were we a dominant racecar. That's the goal. We want to go out there and dominate a race. We could get to the lead, do a lot of things today to be fast, we can recover from a few issues that we had throughout the race, but we weren't the dominating racecar. I don't think there really was one. But we were close enough to put ourselves in position like we did at Vegas and be able to make it happen there. Q. You mentioned how you want to dominate a race. What's the significant strategic adjustment you have to make to make that possible? JOEY LOGANO: You just have to have faster cars, right? We're always looking to have faster racecars. A lot of me in qualifying, missed it a little bit, qualified 13th, which wasn't an ideal situation. In the beginning of the race we passed quite a few cars, was able to get some stage points. We weren't able to get out front and check out. When we got out front, I still had my hands full with the 4. We needed more long run speed is what we needed to do, more long run speed. Q. At the end the gap to Harvick was .027 seconds. Were you fearing he would place another attack to you before the race was over? JOEY LOGANO: Did I feel like what? Q. Were you fearing the gap at the end was small? JOEY LOGANO: I saw him. I saw him. I felt him (laughter). Q. You were not feeling that maybe he can try something? JOEY LOGANO: I mean, I felt like he was close enough he could have done something, especially we came off on the restart off of turn two down the back straightaway and he was lined up right to me. I was like, This is not a good place to be (laughter). I drove it off in the corner pretty hard, which was his strength. I tried to drive my car like he drove his car. That's where his strengths were, is kind of rolling to the center, figuring everything out after that. Different style than what's natural to me. I had to adjust to stay ahead of him the last lap. If I backed up to where I normally was lifting, he was able to roll to my back bumper, was obviously going to make contact. Like I said, I can't get mad at him if he did. I can't blame him. I'd do the same thing. I was able to stay enough ahead and gas up at the right time to build some gap before the bumper came there. Really cool to be able to race clean and hard. It's a lot of fun. Kevin is one of the best racers that's ever strapped into a racecar, in a stockcar in particular. He's a Hall of Famer to say the least. When you line up at the end of a race against him, you know it's going to be a heck of a battle, but it's a lot of fun. Q. Directly after the race you said you have to find improvement, you mentioned speed. Do you already have some idea in which areas the car has to improve? JOEY LOGANO: I have some ideas. How to fix it, that's a better question for Paul. I'm not smart enough to fix anything, I'm just smart enough to complain about stuff (laughter). I think everyone did their job today and recovered as good as possible. We had a good car, for sure. Don't take me wrong that we weren't fast. We were fast enough to be up there in the car and restarts did everything I told it to do which allowed us to recover from the jack that broke on the final pit stop. To have a restart like that just means your car did what you needed to do. It takes a whole package. You try to learn everything you can about restarts before the race and during the race, but if your car doesn't do it, you don't look like a hero. Because today my car did what I told it to do, we were able to really pass a bunch of cars even after our jack broke. Q. This is already your second win in 2020. What has worked so well for you this year? JOEY LOGANO: I think we just capitalized on the situations ahead of us. Vegas we were quick. Didn't look like we were going to win. Caution came out, we stayed out, we capitalized. Same thing today. Restarts we capitalized. Good strategy by Paul to put tires on, put us in position to race aggressively. I thought when we pitted there we had six laps on our tires. That's a tough call. That's a real tough call. Six laps on your tires and you're leading the race. What are we going to do? He said, Pit. He didn't think we could win the race from where we were. I agreed. The 4 was faster than us, was catching me to where I probably wasn't going to be able to hold him off. Kudos to him to realize that. Tough call, though, because you pit and you lose a lot of track position. Of course, that's the time we pit and we have a jack that breaks and we lose even more track position. I'm sitting there thinking, Boy, we really should have stayed out now. You don't know that you're going to have an issue on pit road, you can't race scared. Like I said, the recovery from that moment was remarkable. Q. Would it be too much of an exaggeration to say that the drivers and perhaps the collective garage area has taken a sigh of relief in terms of now what we should expect from a more competitive championship race? JOEY LOGANO: I think everyone in this whole facility took a sigh of relief today. You know what I mean? I'm sure all you guys reporting on a race, you want to talk about how great something is, not that it was single file and we couldn't pass, drivers are mad that you can't pass. I don't know, that's not a good story. Yes, the competitors, I think NASCAR, I think the fans, the media, everyone that puts so much into this sport, it's our life, right, so much that we do for it. It's cool to see that we're able to make changes and make a difference and really put on what I thought was obviously a great race. We won. Even if we didn't win, I would have said that was a pretty cool race. When you got out front, didn't mean you checked out. Some did. That's always going to happen. The fastest cars always end up in the front, always hard to pass that car. I thought there was just a lot of good racing. Restarts were still crazy as usual here. But I thought the awesome sauce was awesome. Q. Between the tires, the PJ1 and the new package, they all seemed like positive takeaways from today. Which was your defining factor in your success in the race? JOEY LOGANO: Well, I don't think it's my success, it's our success as a sport today. I don't think any of those made my racecar faster than the competitors, right? Those are the rules that are handed to us. It's our job to try to work within them to make the best racecar and the best race altogether, the best strategy, so on. I think those things that you pointed out there is more to make the racing better. Q. For the restarts they were pretty dicey. Do you think that was because the cars are harder to drive this time around? JOEY LOGANO: They are a little tougher to drive. The restarts we had, one was towards the end of a stage, the other was at the end of a race, and on old tires. New tires today that Goodyear brought was something that really gripped up for the first couple laps, which is worth a lot. When you're on old tires, you get down in the corner, you can't drive in as hard, you start losing the nose, sliding up the racetrack. If there's someone out there, whoa, not good, there's going to be contact. Sometimes there's going to be crashes or flat tires, whatever it may be. I think that's just a product of late race or late stage restarts on old tires. Q. (No microphone.) JOEY LOGANO: I'm sure that's what it comes down to. It's harder to drive on old tires. Most of the time any time there's contact or a crash, it's always because someone made a mistake most of the time. I think when you have older tires, it's easier to make mistakes. Q. You didn't have the best finish in Atlanta last year, but you won at Vegas. Tracks are completely different. Are you optimistic about going to Atlanta next week? JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, I am. Some things transfer over from last year, it's also a whole new team. Kind of hard to say. We had a really good car in Atlanta last time, was looking like we could have possibly won. The 2 was leading. We were running him down, then we had a loose wheel. That was the issue of why we didn't have a good finish there. The speed was there. That's what I look at going back. Lots changes in a year. Excited to get to Atlanta. I think every driver loves that racetrack. It's just such a cool place, old surface, good racing. I lived there for six years, so kind of like a second home track for me. Raced on that quarter mile a lot. Always said I want to win on that big track and I have yet to do it. Hopefully it is. Q. Even before your win today what was your initial thoughts with the success you've had here with the championship being here in November? JOEY LOGANO: Honestly it's been up and down here for our success. We've had runs that we've been consistently top five cars for a while, then we went through a spell where we've been 10th place cars or 15th place cars for a little bit. Everyone just keeps working, trying to get back. I'd say the last year and obviously this race now our speed has come back at this racetrack, which is very important. Hopefully this is the most important race that we've ever run when we come back here. For four drivers and teams it will be. If not, it's just going to be another race. You really want this to be the high pressure race for you. THE MODERATOR: Joey, congratulations. Thank you. JOEY LOGANO: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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