NASCAR CUP SERIES: BLUEGREEN VACATIONS DUEL 1

February 16, 2023

Joey Logano

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: This is Joey's third victory in the NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 qualifying races. He won in 2019, 2020 and 2023. Congratulations on this win. Tell us about those final laps and how you're looking forward to Sunday.

JOEY LOGANO: Thank you. It was obviously a pretty good race for the Fords. Execution went really well. Our cars were fast, which is nice. We showed that in qualifying last night; we were faster than typical in qualifying.

Some good gains there, and that transferred into the race that the cars had speed, and the execution of the Fords working together, doing the pit road piece really well, which kind of separated us.

Right, the goal is to kind of separate yourself to where there's less cars in the pack. To where if you do get shuffled out, you're only going to fall back to 10th or so.

So you want to try to accomplish that, which we were able to do towards the end. You know at that point it's game on. It's race time. We definitely had a couple Toyotas still mixed in the pack, and the 20 started making some moves there.

When that started happening, I felt like, okay, this is going to slow some of the runs down to where I can maybe defend a few, which was able to accomplish that.

And then when the 20 got to my right rear, I just kind of let it happen because I knew the 12 was right behind him, and that was kind of the difference maker, knowing that your teammate is right there to save you after the 20 pulled out there.

It worked out really well. Proud of our race team, keeping the momentum rolling. Like I said, good job on pit road. We did everything right there. Coleman did a tremendous job up top. Again, he gets it. There was no surprises at the end of the race. I felt very comfortable in the situation we were in.

Q. Joey, if you're able to draft with four, five, or six Fords late in the race Sunday, can you anticipate at what point that group is going to break up and try to win the race? Last lap? Two to go? Or like tonight? What do you think?

JOEY LOGANO: It seems like if it is single file, you can kind of expect the last laps, two to go, three to go, the intensity starts picking up. The runs, people are starting to bump each shove. People are trying to shove each other out of the line to try to force somebody to make the move. They're waiting for that stuff, and as you feel that, right, it's coming.

If you're two wide, the racing starts sooner, right? If you are two wide already, there's going to be plenty of bumping and banging with 10 to go, right, or 15 to go.

But if it does get to the point where a line is able to pull out and there's some control of the race, you know it's coming one or two to go. It doesn't matter if it's a Ford or a different manufacturer. You know at some point -- it's the Daytona 500; you know it's coming at some point.

Q. Last year in the Duel you threw a block there and it didn't go so well. Was that in your mind at all? Like I want to win this, but I'm not going to try to do what I did last year?

JOEY LOGANO: Well, yeah, duh. Hey, that's why I always say, making mistakes are okay as long as you learn from them. I made a massive mistake last year. I felt like an idiot. But being able to have another chance at it, that's what life is about. If you don't take risks and be willing to make mistakes, you don't really learn.

I learned a valuable lesson last year and was able to just be smart about the way I worked the draft there at the end. Felt confident. I knew what blocks I was going to be able to throw and which ones I wouldn't, and you kind of seen that into Turn 3 where I just let the 20 have it. There was no sense of trying to make that block.

I learned some valuable lessons and it worked out. Maybe last year wasn't so bad after all.

Q. On Sunday do you attempt that block potentially?

JOEY LOGANO: I can't tell you what I'm going to do. I have lots of secrets. I'm a secretive person over here. I don't know what I'm going to do, if I'm being honest.

Q. Winning is nice, I guess, but with such a limited amount of action or attempts to try some things, did you learn anything from tonight, and what are you going to try to figure out in practice to get you ready for Sunday?

JOEY LOGANO: Absolutely I learned things. Any time you get on the racetrack these days, it's very valuable. We don't have much time on the racetrack anymore. We didn't practice yesterday, so we've not made a lap. So you fire off on the first lap and you're bumping and banging and you're like, hope she drives okay when you get there.

Yeah, definitely learned some things. I want to go back and talk to Paul tonight and come up with a game plan for practice tomorrow and how we can tune our car in a little bit better. It's not bad. Obviously it's fast. Handles pretty good. Takes a push pretty well. Just kind of little things that you can fine tune, which is a nice place to be, right?

We're not wholesaling our race car. We got a fast race car, so want to maintain that. But there's never enough. It's never good enough. You've got to keep looking for more.

Q. You look at who's come through Team Penske with Brad and you and Ryan, and I'm curious how much, what kind of things did you learn from Brad? What kind of things have you picked up in this type of racing and how it's been translated to Ryan, and has Ryan learned too much from you guys being in the room hearing both of you talk through the years?

JOEY LOGANO: I mean, it's all about how much effort you're willing to put into something. I don't think anybody at Penske looks at speedway racing as a luck thing. Sometimes you just have bad placement.

But the majority of it is if you can control some things or you can keep yourself towards the front -- if you get wrecked in the front, you get wrecked in the front. Like what are you going to do?

But I think you can still put yourself up there with doing things correctly. I mean, Blaney is part of those conversations when it was the three of us then.

Now everybody has like their own style. Like Blaney's style out there is significantly different than mine and what I'm willing to do compared to what he's willing to do. We drive our cars two completely different ways in the draft, which Brad and I probably were a little bit more alike in the draft, which worked out really well.

But Blaney has done a great job at finishing up front and winning these things, as well. There's more than one way to do this, and Blaney has kind of found his way that works for him.

Knowing that, that kind of fits into the recipe of how we're going to figure this whole thing out together. So as Austin and Harrison are able to get more laps out there, learn about the draft, learn the things they want to do, they're good students of the game, too, they're listening well and doing their own studies and those type of things.

The game is not as simple as it used to be. It evolves. It evolves so quickly. This draft is never the same two races in a row, no matter if the rules are different or the same. It never is the same from one week to the next.

Q. You talk about this type of racing evolving. Okay, there's a caution right now, so now we're going to see for the first time it's speedway racing the choose rule. From a driver's point of view, what are the things that you're thinking about or what are the things that you have to consider, because there isn't as much of that history or any of that history to fall back where you can have the engineers figure it out and the spotter tell you what number to count to and what lane to pick. What are you going to look for and what are you thinking from a driver's point of view with this now?

JOEY LOGANO: They're doing it right now. You know, it looks like it's pretty equal right there. I would say the difference with the speedway cheese is teammates. Like do you line up with your teammate? Do you take the shortest lane? Which lane do you think typically goes better?

It's closer to 50/50 than it is at other tracks. It's not as black and white as it is at other tracks where you can go back and look at restarts and look at history and say, well, this lane is definitely better. It's the dominant lane, so you are willing to give up a row or whatever it may be to get in that spot.

Now it's kind of like, what's the alliances around you and what are you willing to do to get with each other. Are you willing to give up a row to be with your teammate, and is that worth doing that. Those are the questions you have to ask now.

So it will be interesting to see how that plays out over this race and the 500, how that kind of goes. But it's definitely a new thing to think about. A lot of conversation around it, so we'll see how it plays out. I haven't gotten to do it yet.

Q. Obviously there's always so many cautions late in the race, and there's always a late restart. Is there a point where you don't follow your teammate, or you shouldn't expect your teammate to follow you if you pick the lane first?

JOEY LOGANO: Possibly. Possibly. It just kind of depends on the scenario. Who's around you, who's fast cars, who's a good drafter, who is not. Like you want to position yourself in the best spot, and you don't want to penalize your teammate ever. You'd rather have friend out there than not have a friend. But being together and being 15th isn't worth anything.

You want to be together up front like we were tonight and that's why we won the race. But if you're together in 15th, that ain't worth crap. You've got to put all the stuff into the equation and say, okay, what is right here.

You don't have a lot of time to think about it because a lot of those decisions are going to be a reaction off of what happened right in front of you. Your spotter has got to be on point of understanding as a team what you want and then reacting quickly because as a driver you can't see the choose good enough on what everybody is doing there. It makes it tricky for sure, really hard.

THE MODERATOR: Joey, congratulations again. We wish you the best of luck on Sunday.