Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion, spoke with Ford Racing following the final Cup practice session Saturday afternoon at Homestead Miami Speedway. Logano finished seventh in the final session, fastest among the Championship 4, and spoke about his team’s final preparations and what the next 24 hours look like.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell Pennzoil Ford Fusion – “I feel we are in pretty good shape. We are not very fast on the short run. We were still seventh on the board but we didn’t quite have the takeoff speed we need so we will try to find a little bit there. I feel like the long run is where our Shell Pennzoil Ford is really fast. We are able to maintain speed for a long time and that is key here at Homestead where you see a lot of long green flag runs. There is a lot of room to race here and a lot of long green flag runs. At least I am telling myself that to make myself feel good. I think we have seen that in the past here quite a bit though.”
HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO GET THE CAR TO WORK ON THE BOTTOM GROOVE? “I can a little bit and I feel like toward the end of the practice we were able to make it work a little better than we had been able to earlier in practice. I still think the top is preferred for everybody but you have to be able to move around a little bit and I feel like our car can do that.”
HOW MUCH HAVE YOU BEEN LEANING ON THAT TEST YOU GUYS DID DOWN HERE FOR WHAT YOU ARE PUTTING IN THIS THING THIS WEEKEND? “Quite a bit. About every change we tried, I don’t want to say didn’t work but it didn’t have a huge positive effect. That means we are doing a good job at our tests at trying a lot of different things and coming back with a good package. We were able to learn stuff for sure that as the track changes, because we tested into the night when we tested here, will carry through from day to night. Also, we get to check out what happens in the Nationwide race and see what happens here.”
I KNOW YOU WILL TRY TO MAINTAIN SOME SEMBLANCE OF NORMALCY. HOW HARD HAS THAT BEEN ESPECIALLY NOW THAT ALL THE PRACTICE IS OVER AND IT IS JUST TIME TO GO RACE? “It hasn’t been hard at all really. The whole team has been really relaxed. I told the guys that no matter what happens tomorrow that we deserve to be here and have shown that all year and they have done a great job. Now we go race our guts out and have some fun. The whole team has that attitude and that is what we need to do to be successful. What we have done up to this point is gone out there and raced hard and have fun with it. We won’t change that now.”
WHERE IS YOUR CONFIDENCE AFTER BEING FASTEST OF THE FOUR IN HAPPY HOUR? “I feel good about my race car. Of course there is confidence. Lord know what can happen in the race. We know how that goes but having a fast race car is the priority today. I feel like our car has got the speed. Maybe we are a few little adjustments away from being the fastest car, but I already feel like we are a top-three car right now.”
WHAT IS YOUR PLAN FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT? “I will do the same thing I do any other time except hopefully we are celebrating a championship on the Nationwide side. That would be a good thing. From here I will go debrief with Todd and get a read on what our car did. We will go to our team meeting and make some good adjustments for tomorrow and then watch the Nationwide race. I suppose later I will watch some TV and then go to sleep. The Nationwide celebration should go fairly late and we will enjoy that. That is a lot of hard work so hopefully we are able to do that. Then we will go home – I say home but to the motor home – and we will have some dinner. Brittany and I will talk. We have been watching Boy Meets World like nobody’s business so we will probably watch an episode of that and go to sleep.”
WHAT IS FOR DINNER? “I am not sure but Brittany makes this pineapple chicken dish that I love so we will probably have that. Nothing too crazy, just a normal night.”
HOW ABOUT TOMORROW? “I think we treat it like any other Sunday. Why change what we have been doing? We will approach it the same. Obviously there will probably be a couple extra thoughts that we don’t typically have. A couple of moments of reflection. We have had those moments and raced the last few weeks with those thoughts in our minds of what we need to do to get through the Chase. We will just keep it how we have been doing things.”
WHERE WILL YOU WATCH THE RACE FROM TONIGHT? “It depends what time the team meeting is. Most of the time I watch in the Penske coach while debriefing the Cup cars. I would say I will watch most of it there on TV. Sometimes I go up in the spotters stand but tonight, I think I will watch most of it on TV and then hopefully join the celebration.”
