Motor Racing Network’s Kim Coon talked with Joey Logano this weekend about a number of topics before he gets ready to race in Sunday’s Auto Club 400 at Auto Club Speedway. The interview will also air on NASCAR Live Tuesday.
Q: A win last weekend at Las Vegas, only the second race of the season. So after all the swaps and changes Penske made in the offseason did you expect the win to come this early?
Logano: Yes, I would like to say that because we expect to win every race. With that being said though there’s so many unknowns going into a year, especially with a new team and what you are going to have to kind of fight through and figure out with each other. Whether it’s setup stuff, communication stuff and trying to figure all that out. And yes there’s still areas we can improve for sure. It’s still very new to us and that’s something that makes me so excited is that when I look at how long the runway is with Paul and I to be able to be successful. To see some success to start only gives me more confidence of what we can do because there’s still a lot of room for improvement and I think that’s great. I’m excited about the season and it’s nice to grab a win early for sure. It’s nice to grab a win together as a new team because it builds that confidence between each other, but it’s early. We still got a long ways to go but it’s nice to start grabbing some of those playoff points now.
Q: Mario Andretti congratulated you on Twitter on the win. When you read something like that how does it make you feel?
Logano: Mario Andretti to me is like the coolest guy in the world. To me that is very special. I’m lucky enough to get to see him a few times a year and I’m just a Mario Andretti fan. How can you not be? The number one coolest thing that I have ever received, the coolest gift, is when I won the Dayton 500. Mario sent me a picture of him when he won the Daytona 500 and he signed it to me and he said, “Finally another Italian won the Daytona 500.” And to this day that sits right next to the trophy that I have at home. I think that is the coolest thing. He’s a legend. You don’t have to know anything about racing and you know who Mario Andretti is. You know who Richard Petty is, you know who Dale Earnhardt is, and you know who Jeff Gordon is. Those seem like the ones in America that people know, no matter who you are and if you have never watched a race and know nothing you know those names because they’re iconic, and rightfully so they should be. They have all earned that right. Mario is someone that has won Indy 500s, Daytona 500 and Formula One races. It’s amazing what he has been able to do. I just think it’s cool he knows who I am.
Q: You mentioned there’s still some learning curve with the new team, but is there anything in the last couple of weeks that you learned about Paul Wolfe that you didn’t know before?
Logano: There has been a few things. His intensity level, his desire to win is more extreme than I thought, which I love. I love that, I’m fiery obviously and he’s got some fire inside him. He doesn’t show it publicly very much because he’s very quiet, I always say he has a quiet intensity. There’s not a lot of words coming out of him but you can tell his wheels are spinning one hundred miles per hour in there. There’s not a lot of wasted words is what I would say about Paul. He thinks everything out and everything that he says he has a real good reason behind it and his questions are very in depth of where he’s trying to go with the car. That’s been a lot of fun to kind of learn that dynamic and we have been able to work together pretty well together because of that. I have known him for years, we just worked at a distance at Team Penske but on another team. But now obviously you let the guard down, you talk to each other more, you get to know each other. We have a lot of similarities.
Q: You feel like your team can be the strongest in the Penske camp?
Logano: You hope to be. I don’t look at it that way I just want to be the strongest team on pit road and I think that’s probably the number one thing. And to get to that point you need to have teammates that can push you. You have to be able to go back an fourth. If you look at Team Penske over the last few years there’s been times that the 12 has been the fastest, the 2 has been the fastest and it goes in waves for five, six weeks at a time and that’s healthy. Yeah, you want to be on top all the time, of course you do. But having someone that is going to push you to be better all the time that’s how you ultimately beat everyone on pit road. That’s what we need to continue to happen.
Q: A lot of changes to the schedule this season. What are you most looking forward to?
Logano: Doubleheader at Pocono keeps coming to mind on how that’s going to work out. I’m excited about seeing that the most and how we are just going to get through that weekend. That’s probably what stands out the most to me. Final regular season race in Daytona, that’s going to be pretty neat. I’m glad we got a win early. For the race fans and for race teams you are never out of it. Before if you get to when it was Richmond there’s only certain cars that usually have a chance to win a race like Richmond and Indy like it was last year. Most of the time the best cars are going to win those races. There big races, the handling comes into play, the best teams win. At Daytona most the time the best teams win, but we have also seen where there’s so many crashes and every now again, you know maybe one out of 10 or one out of 15 races there’s an underdog story that comes out ahead. And it could be that time. That might be the one race that bumps somebody out of the playoffs that you would expect to be in and put the underdog in the playoffs and that could happen the last race before the playoffs, how crazy. I think that’s a cool thing that NASCAR did there.
Q: Does a win this early change anything strategically for you and the team?
Logano: You have to keep attacking here early in the game. Yeah, is it nice to be in the playoffs, of course it is. That’s nice and I guess you can relax a little bit from that standpoint. But we’ve seen throughout the last couple years with this new playoff system how each point can really add up. Whether its playoff points, regular season points that equal into playoff points at the end of 26 races. Each position whether its stages or finishing can be the difference of getting to racing in Phoenix at the end of the year for a championship or not. We have seen it plenty of times come down to one point. Last year we were one win away during the regular season of racing for a championship in Miami and instead we weren’t. It’s pretty easy to go back and look at where we have given up six, seven, eight playoff points throughout the year and that would have been the difference. Does that mean we would have win the championship? Who knows, but we would have had a shot at it. And because of that it makes you think of all these races leading up to it that can be the difference.
Q: We are right next door to Hollywood. Is there a celebrity that if you saw them in person you might be a little bit starstruck?
Logano: Probably not. It’s cool that a lot of celebrities come to the racetrack. If they’re really race fans you have something to talk about. If they’re not race fans it’s kind of like what do I say? I’m not a huge movie watcher, I don’t sit down and watch things for very long and I don’t know names very well or know details about someone else’s life. It’s easy to ask questions if you know something about them. A lot of time you do these meet and greets you’re like “Hey you happy to be at the track today?” Yeah ah man this is great, alright cool! You end up taking a picture and all and it’s great, I’m glad we are able to bring a lot of Hollywood and bring them to the speedway and introduce them to racing. Obviously if they are big race fans there’s plenty to talk about. I guess, I really don’t get starstruck.
Q: I saw where this is going to be the last season of the Penske Games. Is there anything that you can let us in on in terms of stuff that you guys have filmed so far?
Logano: Probably the most fun we had is we played dodgeball, it’s such a fun game. Then they put these drunk goggles on and you can’t see anything. You’re pretty much blind and everything is all in a different spot. We played dodgeball with the drunk goggles. I’m going to tell your right now it’s pretty dumb, whoever decided that was okay for all of Penske’s drivers to be walking around not being able to see throwing dodgeballs and running into things, that wasn’t a smart move. We really can’t control ourselves because we’re in a competitive environment and you click into this gear that you’re going to win. No one got hurt so that’s good, so it worked out, so whoever’s idea it was that maybe I’m thinking it wasn’t the smartest they are off the hook because no one got hurt. Might be why we aren’t doing the Penske Games. but that was the most fun.
Q: Looking at all of the drivers that run for Penske accross all motorsports, which one do you feel like you have the most in common with?
Logano: Probably (Josef) Newgarden. Although he spells his name different than the way I spell mine. He spells it with an “f” but I give him a hard time. I tell him weren’t you born in America why do you need to spell Joseph with an ‘f’? Usually what ends up happening in the free time, he’s the other ultra-competitive person there that we end up playing ping pong and they yell at us because we’re way too loud. We’re the two biggest kids there. That’s probably the one I have the most in common with. I think the other part that I thin we have in common is he’s able to flip a gear kind of like me, we can enjoy it and have fun and you can tell he’s really intense behind the wheel of a race car. He’s very in tune with the business side of the sport as well and I think that’s pretty cool to see that dynamic.
Q: What is the most important thing you have learned about yourself becoming a father?
Logano: That’s a loaded question because there’s so much. Your perspective changes and I think that’s probably helped me more on the racing side than a lot of things. When you don’t let your job define who you are, it takes a little bit of the pressure off. I’m obviously still passionate, I’m still aggressive and I still love what I’m doing but at the end of the day it doesn’t make me who I am. I think that’s the biggest thing to where your able to go out there and do your thing and then your able to go home and do what’s most important, which is being a father and a husband and doing all of those things. Sometimes doing your job is being a good husband and father to, but being able to flip the gear from one to the other. Also knowing on a bad day that life is still great, knowing that I have a great family that loves me and I’m able to do that. I love what I do, I love racing but it’s not the number one thing to me anymore. I think that’s probably what’s changed me for the better.
