Ford Performance Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series (NCS)
Friday, June 26, 2020
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang, and John Hunter Nemechek, driver of the No. 38 Death Wish Coffee Ford Mustang, are headed to Pocono Raceway for this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series doubleheader. Both drivers participated in a conference call with reporters this afternoon and made the following comments.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang – IS IT EXCITING TO HAVE TWO RACES AT POCONO THIS WEEKEND? “I think with these doubleheaders, especially at Pocono, I kind of in a way I look at Darlington earlier when we came back from our little break is almost a doubleheader because we raced and then a couple days later we come back, and it was a completely different race. Yes, the length and the stages and all that were different as well, but if you looked at who the dominant car was that no one can keep up with, and then we come back there a few days later and everyone has changed their cars and that car that was the dominant car was still good, but not nowhere’s near as strong as he was, so I would expect the same thing at Pocono without practice, and that’s what we’ve seen all year long so far since we’ve come back without practices. Some teams hit it and some teams completely miss it and you can’t really fix your car the way you want to until the race is over, and you can’t really do much about it once the race is over. Well, this is our opportunity to work on our car and get better the next day. So it’s gonna be a lot of work, I think, overnight. When we’re done racing Saturday, we’ll be far from done for that day. We’re gonna be continuing to try to find our weaknesses, look at areas to improve our car and give it another shot the next day. So it’s just gonna be a hectic couple days for sure with a lot on the line, but I will say this – I’ve said it 100 times since we announced the doubleheader at Pocono. I know after every race I always say, ‘Dang it, I wish I could do that again. I would do this and this and this different.’ And every time, every race I always say that. Well, this time I get the chance to actually do it again and hopefully be better.”
YOU HAVE SOME GROUPS THAT RUN WELL AT POCONO AND THEN SOMEONE LIKE KEVIN HARVICK WHO HAS NEVER WON THERE. IS THAT SURPRISING? “If you look at the speed that they’ve had though, the 4 is not slow there. Maybe all of the stars haven’t aligned yet to win the race, but I could think of multiple times that I feel like we should have won and we’ve had a car that can win there. Strategy is just a big player of Pocono. Track position is huge. Throughout this race, at some point, I’m pretty sure it has gone this way for years now, that you’re gonna have to make a decision whether you want stage points and try to get a playoff point by winning a stage and collecting some stage points, or giving up your stage points for track position later in the race and a chance to win. Those are decisions that we’re all gonna have to make. Do you want the finish, or do you want the points that are sitting right in front of you right now? It’s a tough call. It probably depends a lot on the speed in your race car, but it’s a tough call. That, to me, is what makes Pocono so much fun is because, yes, restarts are crazy. It becomes a little bit challenging to pass once we get going, but the strategy calls that can be played is crazy, to where you don’t even know where you’re running sometimes. At one point you’re running in the top five and the next thing you know you’re 25th and you’re like, ‘What just happened?’ So it’s just how Pocono works and because you can pit without going down a lap if you’re 11 or 12 seconds back from the leader, it just presents a lot of opportunity there.”
WHAT WILL BE LOOKING TOWARD MOST ON SATURDAY TO ADJUST FOR ON SUNDAY AND WILL THE INTENSITY CHANGE WITH THE LENGTH OF BOTH RACES BEING SHORTER THAN USUAL? “You always kind of go on the restarts here because that’s your big opportunity to pass, so the intensity level I don’t think changes – at least for me. Maybe it does for others, but I’m wide-open from when the green flag drops. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but that’s just the way I race and it’s worked out all right, so I’m gonna say it’s good at least for me. I think the biggest thing we’re gonna be looking towards is the PJ1 that’s down on the racetrack. They lowered it a little bit from what we raced there in the past last year and when we first get there, I believe the truck race is before our race, but then there’s gonna be an XFINITY race and then another Cup race. That’s gonna be evolving throughout the weekend of how much it’s used and what that does to your car. That, to me, is the big question mark of the weekend from a racing standpoint of what line becomes the dominant line, and what do we need to do to adjust towards that as the race goes and as the weekend goes. You know I’m gonna be glued to the TV watching the truck race to see where that ends up and try to take advantage of that early in our race.”
YOU DIDN’T USE THE PJ1 A LOT LAST YEAR. DO YOU THINK IT COULD BECOME THE DOMINANT LINE BY SUNDAY WITH ALL THE RACES TAKING PLACE OVER THE WEEKEND? “It’s a great question and I would say yes, but who knows? A lot of it depends on how early we get up there and clean it off, how thick it’s applied is a pretty big player on how that works, and how the truck race goes. If trucks are up there, it’s gonna run in pretty quick and it will be good for our race. If they don’t, it’s gonna get really dirty and it’s gonna be not very good for our race. But my thoughts are the fact that they lowered it down I think it’s three, maybe four feet. Don’t quote me on that because I don’t know exactly what it is, but I think it’s three-ish feet. You can quote ish, that will kind of make everyone get up in there sooner, I believe, because if you’re in the second lane you’re in it. On the restarts you can’t avoid it if you’re two-wide, so that’s gonna kind of naturally clean it off.”
HOW WOULD YOU RATE THE CREW CHIEF CHANGE AT TEAM PENSKE NOW THAT ALL THREE HAVE WON A RACE? “Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. All of us got a win, so I’d say pretty good. I look at coming out of the gates with the 22 car is the one I can probably speak to the most because I drive that one. With Paul Wolfe and that whole team, we came out of the gates super-strong, being able to win at Vegas and then right after in Phoenix, getting a Duel win down in Daytona. We came out of the gates super-strong and I’d say since then we’ve had opportunities to win. Bristol comes to mind. We’ve had some other races that we were close and were in the ballpark, particularly on the 750 races. I think those have been our strong ones. Our 550 races have been our weakness that we need to continue to work on throughout the season. The challenging part to all this is there’s no practice. That’s the most challenging part of having a new crew chief and trying to built that relationship up, and what works and what doesn’t work. We’re going to these race tracks together for the first time and although I’ve been there 100 times and he’s been there 100 times, we’ve never done it together, so we’re trying to put two and two together of what I like and what’s worked in the past for him and Brad. That’s a tough combination to put together without practice. I think that’s why we came out of the gates so strong is because we had practice to tune our car in to be ready to go for the race. Some practice would be nice at this point as there are some questions that we’re definitely wanting to answer, but this weekend kind of presents that opportunity with a doubleheader to figure that out. To answer your question of the whole change in general, I think it’s really worked well for Team Penske. I think it’s opened a lot of communication barriers and has broken those walls down where you’re forced to talk to each other about your previous races and I think that’s been great. I honestly was happy to see the 12 team win. You work with those guys for so long. That was my old team, so I was with them for eight years or so and I was happy to see them be successful early in the year already with a lot of top fives, but getting that win at Talladega was cool to see Todd and the boys got that. I think it’s brought the team closer, in my opinion.”
DO YOU SEE IT AS AN ADVANTAGE THAT ALL THREE OF YOU HAVE WON? CAN YOU BE MORE AGGRESSIVE ELSEWHERE NOW? “Oh, for sure. I don’t know if it’s from an aggressive standpoint, but the momentum standpoint is definitely there. Any team that wins within Team Penske, I think, builds momentum throughout the shop – the guys building the cars, everyone working in each department. When somebody wins at Team Penske you think about the sponsors, all our partners, everyone that goes along with this, they’re happy. There’s momentum. There’s confidence in what we’re doing and that just trickles down, I think, throughout all three teams no matter what. So, obviously you want that win to be your car, don’t get me wrong, but I do believe that a win is good for everybody.”
CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF TAKING CHANCES YOU WOULDN’T ORDINARILY TAKE WITH IT BEING A DOUBLEHEADER THIS WEEKEND? “Honestly, my mindset stays the same. It’s go from the green flag. Whether we’re racing tomorrow or not, I’m gonna go. Now, the inversion is something you really want to make sure you’re in because the last thing you want to do is finish 21st and you miss the invert. That would really stink. So, you want to make sure you’re within that if you’re not having a good day one way or another is if you have an issue, whether it’s on pit road or get in a crash or something like that, you can almost make both races bad, where if you can at least have a mediocre day, you can set yourself up for a good day the next one by the invert. So the goal is to win both of them. We’re not gonna lay up for an invert, I can promise you that, so you’re aggressive the whole time.”
TEAM PENSKE HAS HAD ONE MEMBER TEST POSTIIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS. ARE THERE ANY EXTRA PRECAUTIONS TEAM PENSKE IS TAKING WITH THE VIRUS? “I think the extra precautions have started from the get-go. I can’t speak for all the teams, but I know that Team Penske is very strict about how they’re taking this virus and taking it so seriously. Everybody in that place has a mask on all day long. If you get on the team plane, you’re mask and rubber gloves the whole time. They’ve done a really good job at that. If you look at who else they needed to quarantine after that is a very small group because everyone has been so strict at Team Penske to where it doesn’t shut down our whole race shop because we’ve done a really good job at social distancing where we can, but also wearing our PPE all the time. That’s the most important thing we can do, so, to me, some of the best advice I got out of all this is assume everybody’s got Coronavirus and what would you do? You’re obviously not gonna shake someone’s hand. You’re gonna stay a little bit more distant. You’re gonna wear a mask. You’re gonna wash your hands off or use hand sanitizer. You’re gonna do that stuff. If you have that mindset that the person next to you has Covid-19, you’re obviously gonna be nervous about it. So I’ve tried to treat everybody like they’ve got Covid-19. That’s at least my way of trying to stay safe, but I think in general our sport has done a really good job at it, and I think Team Penske has done even better, in my opinion.”
YOU HAD THE VIDEO RIGHT AFTER NASCAR ANNOUNCED THE NOOSE IN BUBBA’S GARAGE STALL. HOW DO YOU FEEL THIS WEEK HAS PLAYED OUT THE WAY NASCAR HANDLED THE WHOLE SITUATION? “What I applaud NASCAR for the most is the honesty. That’s kind of where it was. You heard Steve Phelps’ interview yesterday, where he came out in the clean. He said, ‘This is what we saw.’ At the time we didn’t know if it was hate crime or not, but it’s something that should not be around, I can tell you that much, and I applaud our family of NASCAR – not just our officials and the NASCAR brass that tells us to do things. What you saw on the racetrack Monday after the rain with all the drivers, all the team members, all the officials pushing Bubba Wallace’s car to the front and standing around it and showing that he’s part of our family – that we’re not seeing color. Yes, we complete. Yes, we all want to win and we don’t care about anything but winning when we put our helmet on, but when our helmet is off it’s love. Choose love. Bubba and other minorities in our sport are part of our family and that’s the way we want to treat our people. That, to me, was the coolest story of it. The noose side of it and taking the right precautions by getting the FBI involved and getting to the bottom of the story, I’m so thankful that they came to the bottom of it and know that it’s not a hate crime – something that was there in a previous race. Not that a noose should be around anywhere or however you want to look at this, but kudos to NASCAR for getting to the bottom of it and then honestly telling everybody what happened, and then also the sport showing the support for Bubba. That’s what, to me, I was proud to be a part of. To me, I thought it was a history-making day and I thought it was really cool to be a part of that.”
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK, No. 38 Death Wish Coffee Ford Mustang – WHAT CAN YOU USE FROM YOUR PREVIOUS RACES AT POCONO THAT MIGHT HELP THIS WEEKEND SINCE THIS WILL BE YOUR FIRST TIME IN A CUP CAR HERE? “I think the experience is everything, from running a truck to an XFINITY car and now to the Cup car. At least with the Cup car package it drives a little bit like a truck around Pocono as far as in that the downforce and drag that you have. The XFINITY car races that I’ve run there have been dragged up races with the lower horsepower, so pretty much everything I’ve ever run around Pocono has been a lower horsepower package, a higher downforce package, so I feel like being able to have that experience in the past and just having laps at Pocono is definitely gonna be beneficial. I feel like everywhere I go this year pretty much in the Cup car is for the first time with no practice, so you just have to adapt fast and move forward and try and do the best that you can every single lap. Having the doubleheader, Saturday is more of a learning day. Hopefully, we can still run very well and do great things on Saturday, but, if not, then we can take what we learned from Saturday and put it into Sunday and gain that experience and a little bit of a notebook and just try to be better for Sunday.”
HOW DO YOU LOOK AT THIS DOUBLEHEADER WEEKEND? “I like running multiple races in one weekend. If I could run all three series, I would. Just being able to race as much as possible and be on the racetrack as much as possible. Every time that you’re on the racetrack you’re learning. I don’t feel like fitness for myself from running two races in one weekend is gonna play a huge factor as far as being out of shape or anything, so I feel good about it. I feel like Saturday to Sunday you can always learn things on Saturday and hopefully you can apply it to Sunday kind of like we did at Charlotte. Darlington wasn’t that great for us, but Charlotte we learned a lot in the Coke 600 on Sunday and we went back Wednesday and had an even better run and a better finish, so it’s all what you can take away from the experience side and the note side and just try to build that notebook of experience.”
WHAT DO YOU FIND REALLY HARD ABOUT POCONO? “All three corners are different. How to set up your car to go around all three corners and how to make sure that your car handles well enough to make the straightaways longer. It’s a tricky race track. That’s why they call it the Tricky Triangle.”
YOU GUYS HAVE HAD SOME GOOD RUNS SINCE THE RESTART. WHAT HAS GONE INTO THAT? “I definitely think from the standpoint of not having practice has gone into that, but Front Row Motorsports as a whole has been trying to increase their program to become a contender every single weekend that we’re at the racetrack. So being able to go and try and contend for top 10s and top fives and the wins and just have the speed in our cars, I feel like we’ve been able to get more speed in our cars so far this year and we just want to continue to do so, and we need to strive to get the finishes as best we can and we just have to be able to close out races.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE PRACTICE AND QUALIFYING COME BACK AFTER THIS PANDEMIC ENDS? “I think that’s all circumstantial in the event and racetrack that we go to. If it’s a place that we struggle at, then I definitely feel like you want to see practice, but if it’s a place you have a good notebook at and you feel comfortable about your setup and you feel comfortable about where you’re gonna start and how you’re gonna adjust on your car, then I like the no-practice stuff. I feel like it creates an amazing race. I feel like everyone has been super-racy and it’s got a lot of the cars really close. I feel like when you have practice some teams are able to get out in front of others on adjustment-wise from how they make adjustments, how fast they can make adjustments, how well their simulation tools are and what-not to be able to fine-tune what they need to and it gives some of the bigger teams an advantage. So having no practice for myself at Front Row Motorsports right now, I think, is a little bit of an advantage to us just from the resource side of maybe not being able to make the changes that some of the bigger teams with four cars can make from different setup-wise. If one of their teammates gets onto something, then all of the other three cars can switch to that setup, whereas for myself at Front Row it’s just Michael McDowell and myself, and it’s pretty much whichever one is better that weekend that’s what we end up going to.”
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE NASCAR TAKE AWAY SOME PRACTICE WHEN WE GET BACK TO A NORMAL SCHEDULE? A LOT OF DRIVERS THINK THE LACK OF PRACTICE HAS IMPROVED THE RACES. “Yeah, I definitely feel like the lack of practice time has improved some of the racing on track. I think it goes back to kind of what I was just saying as far as some teams can get a bigger advantage than others through practice on making adjustments faster than others, or finding something through practice that others may not find that they get that little bit of an advantage, whereas with no practice it comes down to you run what you brung and hope that you brought enough from the setup standpoint and it goes back to communication with your team, with your engineers, with your spotter, with your crew chief and hoping that you make the right decisions through the race. But I feel like some guys have short-run speed, some guys have long-run speed and it mixes it up. Who is out front. Who is racing. It completely mixes it up, compared to trying to fine-tune short-run and long-run speed in a car through practice and just focusing on that.”
DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FRONT ROW WOULD BE IN HAVING BACKUP CARS READY IF NASCAR GOES BACK TO PRACTICE AND QUALIYFING EACH WEEK? “I’m sure that we have cars that are in the shop, some that aren’t put together that would have to get put together, but I feel like all of our focus and attention at this point to try and run the best that we can with no practice has been putting all of our time and effort into our primary cars that we’re gonna run that weekend. Only having to take one car to the race track every single weekend kind of puts an emphasis on the fine details and fine-tuning and going through the setup two or three times and being able to talk over what we’re going to the racetrack with, compared to having to focus on building two cars for the same weekend and maybe not fine-tuning all the details with the personnel that we have. I’m sure that we could get it done. The backup cars I probably wouldn’t want to unload compared to the primary cars with all the fine details that we’ve put in, but I’m sure if it came down to it, the no work hours and everything, we could get it done as an organization.”
WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LAST LAP AT TALLADEGA? “We got down to the final few laps and it was time to try and make a move. We came down pit road and got gas there that last caution. We were really close on making it on our fuel. Our teammate ended up sputtering going down the back straightaway coming to the white flag, I think. It was kind of in and out running out, so I’m glad that Seth, my crew chief, made that call to come down and be on the safe side. We got hooked up with Erik Jones in the middle lane there coming through the tri-oval to the white flag, and then coming through the white flag and down the back straightaway we were in the middle lane. The bottom had kind of stacked up and I’m not sure what caused them to stack up. Erik was behind, I think it was the 10 car or somebody pushing them, and we ended up all going to the outside lane and into turn three, and I got hooked onto Erik Jones’ bumper and kind of just started pushing him. I wish there would have been an in-car camera for his hands because I know what the back of the car looked like as I was pushing him and that thing was every which way from sideways, so it was an interesting technique. He made the move to go to the middle and kind of cleared the top lane, and then he got a run and we were hooked up and we came through the tri-oval and it was about that time I had a lot of momentum. The 10 was kind of coming to my bumper and I pulled out trying to get to his right-rear quarter panel and I got there and I felt like it was gonna kind of be a photo finish at the line, three-wide between the 12, Erik and myself and when Blaney came up to block the 20 he kind of door-checked him, which you’ve seen in a lot of superspeedway races to try and kill momentum, and when he actually doored him it turned Erik sideways and it put himself and myself in the fence. So, what looked like it was gonna be a promising day or a shot to win we ended up finishing eighth, but, overall, at superspeedway races all you can do is keep yourself out of trouble and put yourself in a position to have a shot to win it at the end and we were able to do so, so you can’t be disappointed about that.”
