Ford Performance NSCS Notes and Quotes
Daytona 500 – Daytona International Speedway
Saturday, February 22, 2015
RAJ NAIR, group vice president, Global Product Development, Ford Motor Company – “You can’t ask for a better weekend starting out with the truck race and Brad Keselowski’s truck team winning, and then Ryan Reed winning the XFINITY race for Roush Fenway Racing, and now Team Penske and Joey Logano with the Daytona 500 championship. Roush Yates Engines for those three wins plus winning the 24 Hours of Daytona a few weeks before that. Roush Yates Engines are right now undefeated at Daytona.”
DAYTONA IS BECOMING A SECOND HOME FOR FORD. “What a start for Ford in 2015. We are now 4-for-4 in all the major races we have competed in. We couldn’t ask for a better start to the year.”
IT MUST BE A GREAT WAY TO KICK OF THE NEW FORD PERFORMANCE GROUP, TALK ABOUT STARTING OFF ON SUCH A GOOD NOTE. “Yeah, I think it is really starting to pay dividends with all the work we have done on the technical front and all the homework we did in the off-season. Whether it is the EcoBoost engine of the FR9 engine, all the engines in all three NASCAR series’ I think it really shows the teamwork of working together in a One Ford way and that it can really pay dividends.”
JOEY LOGANO – No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Fusion – PRESS CONFERENCE – “Who won the Daytona 500? (Laughter).” HOW DOES IT FEEL TO WIN THE DAYTONA 500? “About as cool as I thought it would feel. I think as a kid any young racer dreams of winning the Daytona 500. It’s the biggest race we have all year and you’re down here for two weeks and there’s just so much build-up coming up to this race and with the qualifying and the Duels you get out there, it’s the first time you’re racing in a couple months, so there’s a lot of anxiety and a lot of nerves before the race. To be able to pull that car into Victory Lane and see my team there and see my family and my friends. Everyone was here, so it couldn’t be any better. It’s an amazing feeling. I can’t really put it into words. It’s something you can’t describe. I keep re-living over and over again what it was like down the back straightaway when I came off of turn two and I was looking in the mirror. I saw them crashing and I’m like, ‘OK, keep my foot in it here,’ and you hope there’s a caution but I think even not they weren’t close enough to really be able to make a run. You have a split-second after the caution came out and you think about it and you’re like, ‘Did we win?’ And then it’s straight chaos after that. It’s an amazing feeling. I’m fortunate to get to race for Roger and Shell and Pennzoil and Todd Gordon over here. He’s a fricking man. I’m just the lucky guy that drives this thing.”
TODD GORDON, Crew Chief – “We looked at it. I thought as you looked at the week coming into this it was really cold, the Unlimited was pretty cold, the Duels were pretty cold, so a lot of track grip and the pack stayed tight together. We really talked a lot about how we wanted our race car to be come race time and I think we made the right calls. We had enough stability in the car and we could maintain our position up front and Joey did a phenomenal job of finding the right lines and I think Tab Boyd did a great job helping him from the spotter’s stand to get ourselves out front. I’d say the biggest thing that helped us today beyond just having speed and being up there, we worked really well with the 15 car. I think those guys did an awesome job helping us today.”
ROGER PENSKE, Car Owner – “To win this race at all is something special and obviously the Indy 500 has meant a lot to me, but as we competed in NASCAR for so many years and have come up short here, and today to see the competition and what I saw today was a driver who came with us threw his lot with us a couple years ago and Todd jumped on board and to see him manage the race. He was never further back, I think, than 10th. He managed the race and when you’ve got Earnhardt and Johnson and Gordon and all the guys behind him and was able to play fair but yet knew what he had to do was amazing. For me, it’s a credit to what Todd’s done, the team. We talked about this during the NASCAR week. We talked about continuity and I think today you saw it – the same pit crew. We had the same guys on that car and Joey, obviously, he and Todd have built a bond together, which is important. They trust each other and you can see it – the calls on the race track, stay out, two tires, four tires, and that’s what you’ve got to have. It was a perfect day, but I think for the fans the racing was as good as I’ve ever seen it. Other than that mess at the end, it was really clean racing and there was a chance for us to be at the front and, believe me, with three Hendrick cars behind you your odds aren’t very good. We were able to steal one from them today, so Rick’s a great friend of mine. Obviously, the 4 car – he and Joey have had a couple of words, but I think they worked well together there at the end. He backed down a little bit and let us come home.” YOU ARE NOW IN THE 2015 CHASE. “We’re going to have fun for the next 25 weeks.” WHAT DID YOU SEE IN JOEY WHEN YOU HIRED HIM? “I knew that he had raced for a great team and he was very successful on the Nationwide, Busch Series – I forget the name because it changes every year – but anyhow he knew how to win races and I think he had to do with Kyle and Denny Hamlin there, he was the young guy in the crowd and I felt – and Brad was a big part of this putting his arm around Joey and saying, ‘Come on to our team and help us build this.’ I knew that he was gonna be a team player and that’s really what’s paid off because there is great transparency between the two drivers. To me, it’s paid off in spades for us. When he joined the team he won races. You saw what he did last year and this is just the start of I think a career that he’s gonna be a guy at the top for a long time.”
JOEY LOGANO – WHY HAS THIS CHANGE BEEN SO GOOD FOR YOU? “It’s a combination of a lot of things. Sometimes God just throws you in situations and you don’t know why, but you just have to roll with the punches and it turns out to be the best. I think it’s no secret that I probably got thrown into this series too young – inexperienced, didn’t know what I had to do and start working your way up. Then the switch over to Team Penske was the best move of my career. To be here and get teamed up with a great team and it was an opportunity for me to regroup, be who I wanted to be as an adult and not as an 18-year-old kid anymore and go out there and work hard. Something it says at Team Penske in the gym is ‘Effort Equals Results.’ It’s such a simple phrase, but it means so much. Everyone on our team works so hard. I said it earlier in Victory Lane that superspeedway racing was not our specialty at all last year and for me as a driver I’ve never really been that good at this big pack drafting. Over the off-season Todd and I sat down a lot, and Tab my spotter, we sat down and watched a lot of tapes. We went up and watched the second Duel on top of the spotter’s stand. We watched the XFINITY race up there. We did everything we possibly could do to say, ‘We prepared ourselves the best we can for this race,’ and it’s so cool to see that phrase come to life – ‘Effort Equals Results,’ and we’ve got a really cool ring because of it.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – WHAT DID YOU THINK WHEN ALLGAIER HAD HIS PROBLEM. “Aw crap. That’s what everyone says (laughing). Really, the caution comes out and obviously you think about strategy, we’re staying out, we want to save some fuel just in case of multiple green-white-checkers and then they give you a red flag to really just sit on that and make you really nervous. Once you get over the fact that you’re about to throw up (laughing), you can start figuring out how to win the race. I knew Clint Bowyer behind me was the best pusher I had all day. He was very aggressive, pushed me hard and my car was able to handle it at any point throughout the corners and straightaways. There were a few times we got crossed up but it worked and it got us up there, so I knew I wanted Clint behind me. We were just able to execute the plan basically after that and stare in the mirror and try to bring her home.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – DID YOU TELL JOEY TO PRAY AFTER THE ENGINE ISSUES? JOEY RESPONDS, “No, I said that.” TODD BEGINS: “I said, ‘There was nothing we could do about it, just keep digging’ and he said, ‘Just say a prayer.” HOW CONCERNED WERE YOU THAT IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU? “You worry about the things that you can control in this sport and at that point we have no control over it. I think Doug Yates and his guys have one an awesome job of trying to bring as much power as they could to the race track and we had discussions prior to the race about where we could push it, where we couldn’t, and it was unfortunate with the 2 and the 21, but we managed where we needed to be with our motor all day and you can’t worry about things you can’t control. At that point, as Joey said it’s in the racing God’s hands. Fortunately, everything worked out for us.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED – IF YOU COULD PROJECT FORWARD TO YOUR LAST RACE, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE PEOPLE TO SAY ABOUT YOU? WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR LEGACY TO BE? “That’s a tough question. I feel like I’ve got over 20 years left in my career here, so it’s hard to look that far down the path, but as a person I want to be known for more than being just a race car driver. I want to be known as a great person who is willing to help out and give back when I’m supposed to, when you’re supposed to be a good person and was fun to be around, enjoyed life and enjoyed the fact that you get to drive a race car for a job. That’s like the coolest thing ever, and make sure I enjoy every second of it – and hopefully as a winner. So far this has been a great career for me and you only hope you can do as much as Jeff Gordon. Look at what he’s done in his career. He’s been an amazing ambassador for our sport. He was my favorite driver when I first started racing. When I was six years old I rooted for the 24 car because he was the young guy, and now racing against him he’s not the young guy anymore, but he’s still a lot of fun to race against and being able to race against him today for the lead multiple times in the Daytona 500 is a dream come true for any kid. I’ll always remember that for sure.”
ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – HAVE THESE YOUNG DRIVERS REJUVENATED YOU IN SOME WAYS? “The way I answer that is we tried to build this team, when we first brought the Indy Car team down to Charlotte to be one team, and to be able to get talent we knew having the opportunity to get Brad on board. He came to see us when he was still with JR Motorsports and said, ‘Look, at the end of the year I’d like to talk to you and I’ll help you build a team.’ Of course, he was key in contacting Joey to come on board, but you need youth today. You need youth in your business. You need youth on the race track and I think Todd knows that. The people that we hire are ones we want to stay with us and we support them. We’re gonna have ups and we’re gonna have downs and he talked about Effort Equals Results, I think that’s what you’ve seen. Personally, for me, I like seeing these people compete and elevate themselves within the company. That’s what I look for every day. I’ve won a lot of races, but I love to compete with Rick and Childress and Gibbs and Stewart-Haas because the camaraderie off the race track is amazing, but boy when you get to the race track you have to have your game on. To me, seeing these young guys step up it’s like a young golfer like McElroy or a guy like that. To me, that’s the great thing about sports – it brings the best out of people and I think it brings the best out in our team and that, to me, gives me my satisfaction.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — WHAT WAS GOING THROUGH YOUR MIND WHEN YOU HEARD ABOUT THE ENGINE ISSUES ON THE 21 AND 2? “Roush Yates motors does a great job for us and yes, it was two motors that were fairly quick that gave up and I don’t even know what the issue was but I heard it was the same thing. Obviously that raises a little of a caution in your mind to wonder what is going on but there were still a lot of Fords out there running at the time. I just asked Todd if there was anything I could do to help. When he said there was nothing I could do, I stopped worrying about it. All I can do is focus on what we can control like Todd said and try to win the race from there. I tell you one thing, it held together because I was trying to sling a rod out the side of that thing during burnouts and she held together. There is a pretty tough motor in that thing.”
ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – YOU HAVE WON THE INDY 500 AND NOW YOU ARE A TWO-TIME DAYTONA 500 WINNER, HOW DO YOU COMPARE AND CONTRAST THE TWO ACCOMPLISHMENTS? “Well, these are the two greatest races in the United States and just to say we’ve competed for as many years as we have both at Indy and Daytona is something I will never forget. Today the competition and racing for an OEM here which is important and the sponsors and just this race which has gotten bigger and bigger – to me it is pretty special. Obviously I would love to win both of the races in the same year. You set those kind of goals for yourself. Today the Indy 500 is in May and the Daytona 500 is today so overall I think these are two great accomplishments. I get many of the laurels but when you really come down to the facts, it is all about the people that have joined the team for so many years that have brought us the success. It is the drivers, the young drivers, the young mechanics and people that have come across the country to work for our team. Thumbed their way across it and worked their way up to be key people. When you look in auto racing at the people, Knaus and on down the line, look at Todd and all these guys they came from a different background and didn’t just walk in at the top of the sport. You can’t as a driver or car owner and you certainly can’t as a engineer or chief mechanic. You have to build it. That is what we have been able to do from the XFINITY to the Cup side and the truck won the other day with Brad’s team and those guys are future leaders over the wall for us. It is the people. Whether it is Indy or here it takes the same formula.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — HOW MUCH DID THE PIT STOP AT HOMESTEAD STAY WITH YOU OVER THE OFF-SEASON AND HOW MUCH DOES THIS VICTORY ERASE THAT? “It really didn’t stay in my mind that long. You move on. It is history, the past and you focus on the future. If you dwell on the past you will never move forward. Obviously you are frustrated at the end of the race and the team stuck together and their attitude was awesome over the off-season to become better. We used it as a positive and how to motivate ourselves to be a better team. This whole speedweeks, every stop they had was spectacular. Each one was fast. We gained spots every time we came down pit road. I am confident knowing I have the best team out there, road crew and pit crew, they are both the best out there. As long as we stay together as a team when we lose as a team that is what makes a strong team. People that live and die together. It is really cool to see how they reacted over the off-season and used it as a positive.”
DOES IT FEEL LIKE IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN IN THE SPORT FOR SO LONG? DID THE PRESSURE ON YOU AS A TEENAGER HELP OR HURT YOU? “Did you just call me old too? Geez. What is this my seventh 500 I guess? I am 24, which is cool because I have been through a lot in my career already and still have a long way to go like we talked about a few minutes ago. The success that we are starting to see has been a lot of fun. I am so happy and thankful that I went through the times of trying to figure this out and the tougher times of worrying about if you are going to have a job or not. Worrying about winning a race and worrying about having a job are two different things. When you get to the point where you worry about winning races that is where you want to be in your career. Without going through the other points I wouldn’t be the person I am today both on and off the track. I am thankful for that to be here and having gone through all of that.”
ROGER PENSKE CONTINUED – WHEN YOU HEARD YOUR DRIVER AND YOUR CREW CHIEF TALK ABOUT ENGINE, DIDN’T YOU ACTUALLY GET ON THE RADIO AND SAY SOMETHING? “Well, what I did I realize that there were 13 Fords in the race and two of them had a problem so our chances were good that we would be fine. I said to Joey I think to just keep his focus out the window. There was nothing else to do. Todd had said the same thing. He asked the question of what had happened. We knew but there was no reason that was going to be something he needed to know. He needed to stay focused on the restarts. Quite honestly, we have gotten great engines from Roush Yates and all of last year. It is right on the edge. In order to run with these guys we have to be on the edge and we obviously were today. For me, I was just watching the race to see him get to the front and stay there and the engine thing was secondary once we got the restart.”
WHAT WOULD A BRICKYARD 400 MEAN TO YOU ON TOP OF DAYTONA AND INDY 500 WINS? “That would be something special. That has gotten away from us. We were close a couple of times and I am going to have a good talk with these guys on my right and the ones that aren’t here about how we can get that. That seems to be one – Jeff Gordon seems to have the combination there. Maybe when he retires we will have a chance. That would be real special.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — DO YOU FEEL OVERLOOKED WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THE YOUNG DRIVERS COMING UP IN THE SPORT? “I don’t know about overlooked. The fact is I have been here awhile. The advantage I have now is that I am basically the same age as them but with seven years’ experience. You see the reward from the hard work put in earlier. I feel like I am still involved with the youth movement and I hope to be the leader of it having been here before and understanding how the sport works a little bit and knowing what I need to do as a driver you want to take advantage of that and try to build our sport bigger and better all the time. How can we reach a younger demographic more? That is why I liked Jeff Gordon when I was young, because he was young. How we can reach more kids is a role I want to take on as a driver because I know I want NASCAR as a sport to keep growing like it is. It is a role I want to be able to take on because I have been here awhile but am still a young guy.”
HAVE YOU THOUGHT A LOT ABOUT THE HISTORICAL IMPACT OF WINNING THIS RACE? “There are a lot of cool things. There is a really cool trophy out there that they put everyone’s names on. There is a lot of history there. It is neat to have your name associated with that. I was in the Fox Hollywood Studio over there and before I went on air they had a picture of our car doing a burnout and it said underneath it ‘Joey Logano, Daytona 500 Champion’, and I thought that was cool so I took a picture of it because that was neat. There are a lot of really cool things that come along with this and I am not even really sure what they all are yet. I know that all week long you see a lot of the old race footage and they have been running that special on TV and you see what it means to be in the Daytona 500 and it is an amazing feeling just to be in the race. I remember my first race here and when I walked out on pit road with my dad and I about had tears because it was amazing to be in the race. Winning it, you can only imagine. It is ten times cooler than that. It is the biggest race of the year against the best of the best in stock car racing. It is really cool to be associated with the names that have won this before.”
WHAT WILL THE PARTY BE LIKE AND CAN WE COME? “I don’t know if we should have media there but sure, what the heck, come on. I don’t honestly know how to party. I am sure there is somebody on the team that knows how. It is funny because for a while when I first striated racing I wasn’t 21 so milk and cookies was my party. Now I am old enough at least. Usually Brittany and I just have a glass of wine and re-watch the race. I think all my guys, the pit crew and road crew are staying here. We are going to do something. I think they are more experienced in the party side of it. So we will figure it out as the night goes.”
YOU WERE REALLY THE ONLY FORD IN CONTENTION THERE AT THE END AND YOUR TEAMMATES WERE OUT OF THE RACE. HOW DO YOU FIGURE OUT WHO TO WORK WITH IN THAT SITUATION AND WHAT ABOUT HAVING DENNY HAMLIN AND KEVIN HARVICK, GUYS YOU HAVE HAD ISSUES WITH, AROUND YOU THEN? “Obviously you think about that but I would like to say it has been long enough that we can move on and race with each other and we did. I chose the 15 as a teammate in a way today and someone to work with because for some reason you get two cars that match up really well and two drivers that have the same agenda and same level of aggression and being able to force a situation and he matched up well with me today for some reason. We started pushing and I knew I wanted him behind me the rest of the race. Anytime I can figure out how to get Clint behind me to push me we were able to pass cars. We restarted 10th with like 20 laps to go and together we worked our way up there three wide for the lead for a little bit and he gave me a couple big ole shoves to get into the front. We saw a lot today that when you get out front and clear of the pack you can work each line and do what you can to try to stay up there. It took a big run for someone to pass for the lead. Getting there was very important. Beyond that point you are just in the mirror. Having the right guy to push you was key.”
JOEY LOGANO CONTINUED — CAN YOU SUM UP YOUR RANGE OF EMOTIONS FROM BEING LET GO BY GIBBS TO TODAY WINNING THE DAYTONA 500? “Some of the emotions you go through when you start to think about if you will have a job next year – it is hard as a race car driver to say. Especially for me because I poured all my eggs into one basket. I was banking on this one and you come to a point it is scary and you don’t know what will happen. That win in Pocono was one of the biggest of my career because I was able to prove to myself that I could still win one of these things and that was a special race for me. Who would have ever guessed three years down the road that we would be Daytona 500 champions. That is just crazy. Life is a roller coaster and you have to roll with the punches and it all comes out good in the end as long as you trust in God.” YOU MENTIONED THE COOL RING YOU JUST GOT. GIVEN YOUR TRACK RECORD WITH RINGS, WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THAT ONE? “I hope I don’t lose this one. This one is harder to replace I think. Well, wait, I take that back. I screwed that up there didn’t I? Hang on. What I mean was that she is still here with me and the ring is just a symbol. She would be impossible to replace. That is how you redeem yourself (laughter). I am going to stop. The ring is super cool. I will make sure I put it next to the bed when I go to sleep tonight along with the trophy and Brittany.” WERE YOU ABLE TO MAKE USE OF THE IN CAR TRACK BAR ADJUSTER? “It isn’t an option on superspeedways. They take that out of the car. It isn’t an option. Next week will be the first time we get to use it. We will see how that goes. We haven’t tested the new package as a team – the 22 team hasn’t. We aren’t really sure what it will do yet. Handling did come into play a lot today. That was a big story to me and I was surprised how much we started to lift in the corners. It felt like the old Daytona before they paved it and you had to lift a little and the car was getting tight. You are starting to ask for adjustments and grip in your car. That is something we haven’t said in Daytona for a little bit. It is starting to come back to old Daytona, which is cool. I think it puts on a great race, is a lot of fun and at the end it was amazing because you see throughout the race how a lot of cars weren’t handling well and then at the end we are three-wide and wide open. It was like, ‘How did we find this? It wasn’t working at the beginning of the race.’ It is amazing how everyone finds that next level at the end of the race.” GUYS THAT WERE 2ND THROUGH 4TH DIDN’T FEEL THEY HAD ANYTHING FOR YOU EVEN IF THE CAUTION HADN’T COME OUT. DID YOU FEEL CONFIDENT YOU COULD HOLD THEM OFF? “I wasn’t very certain at all. I have never won a speedway in this big pack group racing before. I wasn’t certain about anything because this isn’t my specialty and having never won one before you are never sure what is going to happen. I don’t think anyone is certain of what is going to happen. I don’t care how many you have won you are probably never certain you will win one of these things. You do what you know how to do and try to make the best of the situation. It is cool to be able to hold those guys back there but it took a lot of teamwork to do it.”
TODD GORDON CONTINUED – TALK ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH JOEY AND WHAT WINNING THE DAYTONA 500 MEANS TO YOU PERSONALLY. “When Joey came on board, it is funny that we are now in our third year together, but there were a lot of similarities in how we raced and how we talked and how our personalities where. How we wanted to handle people and our race team to be. We have people, this whole Shell Pennzoil race team has a lot of continuity. They are guys that like to hang out together. We don’t have any separation in our group. That comes from Joey and myself and everybody here. It is a group that gets together. I am a lot older than he is because I am an old guy but we have some similar thoughts and similar focuses and he is a genuinely good person which I think that everybody migrates toward that. It has been great and the relationship has been something where we trust each other with everything. Today was a perfect example of being too tight and calling for two tires and there was not hesitation in Joey’s mind and he understood track position had to be maintained. It was a good belief in each other. I don’t ever question what he does and I have never heard him question me.”
