Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse for Team Penske, is the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion and a two-time winner of the Clash. As the season prepares to start this weekend at Bowman Gray Stadium, Logano spent a few minutes chatting with media about what lies ahead.
JOEY LOGANO, Driver, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW HAS YOUR OFFSEASON BEEN? “The offseason has been great, obviously. Anytime you leave the season as the winner, the offseason becomes a lot more enjoyable and also a lot busier at the same time, where a lot of opportunities have come my way and you don’t want to waste those. You don’t want to waste any opportunity that comes your way because you have a championship under your belt. A lot of great things and a lot of fun things. I got to spend some time with the family, which is great and get prepared for the season. The facts are the championship was awesome and we enjoyed it, but it’s over. If you look at the scoreboard right now, everybody has zero. We’ll have an opportunity to go up to Bowman Gray and have a little bit of fun and knock the rust off and just go through the motions and try to win a race up there with nothing to lose and then, obviously, the biggest race coming up here in the Great American Race, the Daytona 500.”
NASCAR SAID THEY WON’T CHANGE THE CHAMPIONSHIP FORMAT. DID YOU EXPECT ANY CHANGES AND DO YOU FEEL THERE SHOULD BE? “I personally don’t expect changes and did not expect changes only because I feel like our playoff system is very entertaining and it also takes a lot to get through those 10 races to win the championship. I know it’s hard to compare to other sports because we’re a unique sport and we’re our own, but there is comparisons that you can draw to the NBA, the NFL, plenty of others as well and their playoff systems – the regular seasons they have versus the playoff runs that they have. Their seasons are long as well and ours is too and you can go up and down throughout all that, but when the playoffs start a lot of times you see teams that fire up and we’ve been one of those teams, thankfully, and it’s worked out for us through time. I don’t think that means you have to change the playoff system. I think if you look at the Xfinity Series and the Truck Series, which that’s the same playoff system with just minor tweaks because of the fuel size, it’s really fun to watch as a race fan. Myself as a fan, not as a competitor, without a horse in the race in those races I find myself glued to the TV watching the races. Personally, and everyone has their own opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I like it.”
DID YOU CARE WHAT PEOPLE SAID AFTER YOU WON THE TITLE LAST YEAR? “To be honest with you, I can’t hear well because my trophies, they kind of echo around me, so I can’t hear that. It’s kind of crazy (laughing).”
WHAT DO YOU MAKE ABOUT MOVING THE CLASH AROUND? “I think we should. I think it always draw up a little bit more excitement and people talk about it more when it’s something new. ‘What are we gonna see at Bowman Gray? I don’t know.’ When we went to L.A. the first time, remember all the talk of what that race was gonna be like and no one had a clue? It draws up a lot of hype, which is good, and you’re also bringing it to the race fan. I’ve said this many times before, but it is hard to ask a family of any size to travel a long distance to go to a sporting event. It’s hard to do that, whether you have young kids or older kids, getting hotel rooms, getting the tickets, it becomes expensive. These days, it’s hard to do that, so I think moving our races around, going to our race fans is great. When you look at what Winston-Salem is to our sport, and that whole region, we all see the numbers and there are a lot of NASCAR fans there, a ton of them, and so going to our race fans is kind of going back to grassroots up there, but it’s also cool that we’re giving race fans that might not have been able to go to other races an opportunity to see a race. Whether that’s in Winston-Salem or in L.A. or name a city, I think moving it around is cool because it gives people opportunity.”
HOW OFTEN HAVE YOU FLOWN INTO THE AIRPORT AT DAYTONA? “For about 17 years now.”
DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE THE FIRST TIME FLYING IN AND SEEING THE TRACK ADJACENT TO THE AIRPORT? “It’s still cool. It never changes. I always enjoy the first flight of the year because you get on and everyone is exciting. You land right next to the race track and then you drive into the tunnel. That experience of getting back in the tunnel is like, ‘OK, a new year, here we go.’ You get settled back in. You get on the racetrack for the first time. That magic to me has never left. It’s always been there. It is more fun now to do that with your kids. My oldest being seven, he gets excited when he sees the racetrack now. He’s like, ‘Oh, it’s right there,’ and you’re landing in the plane and he’s talking about it. That’s cool and there’s a little extra special moment there for sure.”
WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DID YOU GET DURING THE OFFSEASON? “I think there’s a lot of opportunities to take advantage of because the spotlight is on you. I think that’s what I mean when I say that, whether that’s with your partners, the sponsors that we have. How do we leverage what we have with the opportunity we have right now to make a difference? The opportunity to promote our sport, to grow. The opportunity for growth is right now and that will diminish as the season goes along and there are other storylines, but especially right after the season last year until Christmas, it was wide-open because we had opportunities to grow every area of our business in our industry, so, for me, that’s where I felt like the opportunity really was ahead of us – more so than doing cool stuff. I don’t need to go do cool stuff. Honestly, what I want to do is go home with my family and ride my four-wheeler. That’s really what I want to do, so I don’t need to go on different things, but taking advantage of the opportunities that come from the championship to grow our industry is most important as well.”
DO YOU HAVE A PREFERENCE OVER WHERE THE CLASH WOULD BE? IN L.A. IT WAS IN A HUGE STADIUM AND THIS YEAR IT’S A HISTORIC SHORT TRACK. DO YOU WANT TO BE AT THOSE LOCAL TRACKS THAT COULD USE A BOOST OR BE IN THE CITIES, IF POSSIBLE? “You’re asking a driver. I’m not NASCAR by any means. I don’t make the decisions. I don’t see the economics behind the decision and why they do it, so my opinion is purely based off of what I think is cool. I thought what we did in L.A., especially the first year with how many new fans there was there, was one of the largest wins our sport has ever seen that I’ve been a part of. I thought that was amazing and that was going to a whole new market and racing downtown basically, like we were really close to it at least. I thought that was huge. I would love to see our sport continue to do things like that because it just feels big. When we went to the Coliseum, it felt like a big event. It felt big. I’m not saying Bowman Gray doesn’t feel big, but it feels like we’re going to our grassroots, which is also cool in its own way, but different. It’s definitely a lot different than what L.A. is, so, personally, I’d like to see us race in the cities. That’s where our sport has a little bit more of a challenge because it’s hard to put a one-mile or two-mile racetrack in a city. It’s really hard to do that, so if we have the opportunity to be like a baseball team or a basketball team, a hockey team, and NFL team, where their stadiums are where the people are and where people can walk to it, you get a whole new demographic, so I think those type of things are really what I think is cool. I can’t make the decisions. There’s a lot more into what Joey Logano thinks is cool, but that’s what I do think.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE TEST AT ROCKINGHAM YESTERDAY. DID YOU SEE ANY OF IT AND IS IT SOMETHING YOU’D LIKE TO SEE THE CUP SERIES GO BACK TO? “Let’s see how it goes first. Let’s not pull the trigger already, but let’s watch those races. We’re all gonna be glued to our TV on Easter to watch those races, so we’ll wait and see. I know Rockingham in the past, before they repaved it, was one of the most awesome racetracks ever. I had so much fun going around that racetrack, especially the tire wear and all that. The repave definitely changed the characteristic of the racetrack in so many ways, so I’d like to watch the races and see how it goes before I say that, but I do think it’s cool to see these tracks get brought back to life from the state they were in. We’re obviously talking about Rockingham, but also North Wilkesboro, a track that was dead and now it’s brought back to life. It’s pretty cool to see that type of stuff.”
DO YOU FEEL ADDING WORLD CLASS DRIVERS HELPS GROW THE SPORT? “Yeah, it does. It brings a different fan demographic to what we do. In a way, I don’t say it legitimizes what we do in any way because I think what we do, our talent pool that we have as far as drivers, they’re absolutely incredible, but I do think you have fans that come along with some of these drivers, whether that’s from Indy Car or F1 or from the Supercar Series in Australia. We’ve seen that and it brings those fans that may not watch NASCAR racing and say, ‘Well, I’m gonna watch because this guy is in there. I want to see how he does against the NASCAR guys.’ That’s cool. That’s good, so it definitely grows the sport.”
IS THERE SOMEONE YOU’D LIKE TO SEE OR RACE AGAINST? “No. Bring them on. I don’t care. I don’t know if I’ve ever really thought about that. I’m pretty focused on just myself when it comes to racing, so whoever shows up we’ll have to figure out how to beat them. Anybody is welcome. We’ve kind of proven that, especially this year with the rules, so I’d say we’re open doors for people that want to try.”
HOW QUICKLY DO YOU START THINKING ABOUT FOUR CHAMPIONSHIPS NOW? “Pretty immediate that you think about it. On one hand, I think the three championships are great. On the other hand, I think we lost four of them that we should have won, so those are the ones that are always in the back of my mind. Probably not until I’m done racing will I be content with what I have because I’m not done yet. I’m still only 34, so I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me to win more championships and races, so as great as it is, like I always say, the first 20 minutes is amazing because you’re celebrating with your team and your family, and then every day it becomes a little less exciting and more thoughts into ‘we’ve got to do it again,’ especially after Christmas, like I said, it’s over.’”
WHEN YOU GO TO BOWMAN GRAY STADIUM, HOW MUCH FREER DO YOU FEEL TO RACE FOR THE FUN OF IT? “I don’t know if it’s very free, it’s pretty confined in there. It’s pretty tight racing (laughing). You’re not gonna be able to open her up too much, but the pressure feels a lot different when you go there, only because there’s nothing to lose, really per se and everything to win. There’s a trophy to win and a lot of really cool factors to be the first to win at a racetrack, and it’s nice to get a little momentum built and all those type of things. There are a lot of reasons to want to go race, but if something was to happen, it’s not the end of the world. Would I be upset if you turn on TV and I get dumped are you gonna see Joey Logano pissed off? Absolutely, because I want to win, but it doesn’t affect the rest of our season, and I think all of the drivers probably feel similar, I would assume. If you win, awesome. If you don’t win, yeah, you might be mad for a few hours, but you’re gonna get over it and start thinking about Daytona.”
WHERE IS THAT LINE THEN IN A RACE LIKE THIS? “I think there’s gonna be bumping and banging, there’s no doubt. It’s such a tight facility that you’re gonna be bumping and banging, but I would also say things that happen at this racetrack will carry into the regular season, and so it doesn’t mean you throw all caution to the wind and you don’t care about competitors, you don’t care about the future, you don’t care about all that stuff. I always say it’s a self policing sport, so I don’t think it’s one of those racetracks where you’re gonna want to make a bunch of enemies, but at the same time, I don’t know if there are gonna be many passes made without contact. I think there’s kind of what’s acceptable and what’s not, and I think everyone kind of knows what that is.”
THAT MADE ME THINK OF THE TY GIBBS INCIDENT FROM LAST YEAR. DID ANYTHING EVER COME OF THAT? HOW DID YOU RACE EACH OTHER THE REST OF THE YEAR? “It’s obviously something that’s always in the back of your mind. It’s a thought that goes through your mind every time you see that car and that’s just racing. It’s what our sport is. Everyone is gonna keep a score sheet on each other and that’s just what it’s like, but I felt like that was too far. If you want to know where the line is, that was too far. He didn’t even win the race, either, so it wasn’t smart on his part, either.”
YOU MENTIONED AT CHAMPIONSHIP MEDIA DAY THAT IF YOU WON THE THIRD TITLE YOU WERE GOING TO MENTION THAT TO TONY STEWART THAT YOU WERE BOTH THREE-TIME CHAMPIONS. DID YOU GET A CHANCE TO LET HIM KNOW? “I haven’t got to talk to him. I have not (laughing).”
I’M SURE YOU’RE STILL LOOKING FORWARD TO IT. “I would look forward to that, absolutely (laughing).”
