No. 20 Home Depot Toyota News & Notes:

• NEW SEASON + BIG CHANGES = CHANGED ATTITUDE: Even at the ripe young age of 21, Joey Logano is coming into the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup season a new man. Logano ended 2011 and immediately started looking toward to the 2012 season. Along the way during the off-season, Logano and the entire Joe Gibbs Racing organization made some big changes. In came highly-successful NASCAR Nationwide Series crew chief Jason Ratcliff to serve in the same capacity for the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota. Rocky Ryan was brought in as a new spotter. JGR added sponsors and Joey changed his workout regimen. He changed his communication habits. He even got a dog. All of that has led to a renewed passion and a totally different attitude for Logano heading into the 2012 season, his fourth full-time season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and fourth racing for Home Depot.
• ALL OR NOTHING FOR SHOOTOUT: Ask any driver and they will tell you the Shootout, much like the All-Star race in May, is an all-or-nothing event where taking the checkered flag is paramount and the most important thing going. Logano’s career stats in the Shootout show just that as well. In three-career starts, Logano has scored one top-10 finish, a seventh-place run coming in 2010. The other two years, in 2009 and 2011, Logano was running strong but was collected in accidents.
• PICKING FOR HIMSELF HOPEFULLY MEANS BETTER LUCK?: In his three previous Shootouts, Logano has had to rely on former crew chief Greg Zipadelli for his starting position. With starting spots being a random draw of a beer can with your starting spot imprinted on the bottom, Logano was never able to pick for himself due to his young age. Unfortunately, those random draws resulted in starting spots of 19th, 21st and 22nd. This year, Logano is finally over 21 and will be able to pick a can on his own. He hopes this year, with his own hands doing the picking, he’ll improve his luck and maybe finally pick a starting spot in the top-10.
• WHO IS JASON RATCLIFF?: Most people know the new crew chief of the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota from his vast success with the Joe Gibbs Racing teams in the Nationwide Series. Ratcliff led JGR to the Owner’s and Driver’s championship in 2009 and another Owner’s Championship in 2010. Along the way, Ratcliff picked up 34 Nationwide Series wins for JGR with Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin and a total of 41 in his Nationwide Series career. Most people don’t know Ratcliff was born in Sumter, South Carolina and lived for a while in Louisiana and Texas. It was in Texas he got his start in racing, helping a local Sprint Car driver. When Ratcliff got introduced to NASCAR, it was in 1995 with Sadler Racing in Nashville, Tenn., as a mechanic and rear tire changer for drivers Chuck Bown and Gary Bradberry. He moved onto LAR Motorsports with Casey Atwood and Jeff Purvis before becoming Atwood’s crew chief at Brewco Motorsports in 1999. In addition, Ratcliff has worked with drivers Jamie McMurray and David Green, as well as JJ Yeley, Brad Coleman, Aric Almirola, Kelly Bires and Ryan Truex at JGR.
• NEW FACES IN NEW PLACES: In addition to Jason Ratcliff, the No. 20 Home Depot Racing team has added a couple of new faces, while a majority of the team has stayed vastly the same. Rocky Ryan will serve as Joey’s spotter for the 2012 season. Ryan spent the last few years spotting for David Ragan in the Sprint Cup Series. Leo Thorsen is the only new “A-team” addition to the team and will serve as a general mechanic on race weekends. The Home Depot pit crew has two new additions; Joe Crossen will serve as the team’s new rear-tire changer and comes over from the No. 17 Roush-Fenway team while Chris Taylor will be the new front-tire carrier and joins JGR from the No. 1 Earnhardt-Ganassi team.
• SOCIAL MEDIA UPDATE: Joey has been active on both Twitter and Facebook this entire off season. He’s shared stories and photos, especially of his new English Bulldog puppy Isla. He also has given away several sets of tickets to the Daytona 500 through various contests. Logano has been owning up to a new “hashtag” on his 2012 outlook tweets with “#takingnoprisoners.” You can find Joey on the following social media channels: on Twitter @jlogano, on Facebook at facebook.com/joeylogano20, on YouTube at youtube.com/joeyloganoracing. Home Depot Racing can be found on Twitter @HomeDepotRacing
• RACE INFO: The Bud Shootout at Daytona International Speedway is set for Saturday night, February 18that 8pm ET. The race is scheduled to be broadcast on FOX at 8pm and can be found on the radio on MRN at 7pm.

Logano’s Career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Stats:

Logano’s Career NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Stats at Daytona International Speedway:

From the Cockpit:

Joey Logano Quotes: “I’m fired up about the season. I mean, I think I’m in as good of a mindset going into this year than I have been in any of my Cup seasons so far. I’ve just got a renewed attitude and I’m really pumped up about the season. Coming off of a disappointing end to 2011, I was ready to get right back at it and change our luck around. I think you are seeing that attitude not just in me and not just in this Home Depot team, but in the entire Joe Gibbs Racing organization. Bringing in Jason (Ratcliff) as my crew chief, bringing in Darian (Grubb) as Denny’s crew chief and having Dave (Rogers) come back has really changed attitudes and outlooks over at the shop. I think everyone is pumped. In fact, at our team meeting the other day, even Coach (team owner Joe Gibbs) said this might be the best atmosphere and feeling he’s ever seen around the shop. That has everyone excited and we are all ready to get on the track.

“I’m really excited to work with Jason this season. We had the chance to work together a couple of times last year at the end of the Nationwide Series season and we really hit it off. I like the way he goes about working on the car, discussing things through and making changes. He knows what the car is doing before making any changes. He really takes the time to make sure what we are thinking about will change the car in the ways we want before doing it. He is very detailed oriented and that is a big help. Also, our communication is great. We can talk with each other and be on the same page. I’m really looking forward to working with him all season long.

“The Shootout is a great race. It’s a lot like the All Star race in that you kind of use it as a test for the next week’s event, but you also go out there knowing that you are putting it all on the line for this one race and the checkered flag. No points; nothing to worry about. Second isn’t good enough here. You want to win this race. We will also get the chance to really see how drafting is going to work in race situations, which is good to know before the Duels and the (Daytona) 500 next week. But in the end, we all want to win the Shootout. Even though it’s not the first official race, everyone wants to be the first one to Victory Lane to start the season.”

From the Pit Box:

Jason Ratcliff Quotes: “I’m excited because this will be my first time to get to see the Shootout in person. I’ve always been a ‘watch it at home on the couch’ person with this race, so it’s pretty neat to finally be a part of it. And it’s just a great way to kick the season off. It is one of those races where there is nothing to lose really. And being that it’s a night race, there is a lot of excitement built around the whole event. But it really is like an extra practice and a test session. You really use it to look at your setup for the Duels on Thursday, because you run similar setups in the two. It will give us a heads up to let us know if you need to make any changes to that setup or not. With the new rules at Daytona too, it will give us an idea to what our car will handle like and what it will cool like. You can take a lot from practice sessions, but there is no substitute for what you can learn from race conditions. But in the end, it’s still a race and a race you want to win. Nothing better than starting your season off on the right foot and can’t do that any better than winning the first race right out of the box.”

The Joe Gibbs Racing Machines:

• PRIMARY CAR INFO: The No. 20 Home Depot team will take chassis #298 to Daytona for the Shootout.
• BACK-UP CAR: Chassis #325 will serve at the team’s backup for Daytona. It’s the same car the team used in the Daytona test back in January.