Kobalt Tools 400 Race Preview

Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (1.5-mile superspeedway, Las Vegas, Nev.)

No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford Fusion driven by Joey Logano

Sunday, March 9, 3:00 pm ET

• NEAR THE TOP IN MANY CATEGORIES: With Joey Logano’s strong run at Phoenix International Raceway last weekend, the 23-year-old backed up his solid start at Daytona by leading 71 laps and coming home fourth in the desert. Logano never ran worse than fourth under green-flag conditions last Sunday, as he continued to leave his mark on the NASCAR stat sheet through two races this season. Logano is currently third in average running position (7.6), fourth in driver rating (114.2), fourth in fastest laps run (38), third in fastest drivers on restarts, second in green flag speed and second in laps led (73) entering Las Vegas.
• TESTING THE WATERS AT VEGAS: Logano and the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil Ford team will participate in the series open test on Thursday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The test, open to all teams, will help crews get ready for the first race at an intermediate track with the new rules set forth by NASCAR in 2014. The No. 22 team will utilize its backup car for this weekend’s race, chassis No. 844, as the test car on Thursday.
• HEAD WEST, YOUNG MAN: Before flying to Las Vegas, Logano will take a detour through the beautiful town of San Diego, Calif. Logano will address the crowd and participate in an autograph session at the annual Jiffy Lube convention. Jiffy Lube is a major partner of Team Penske sponsor Shell-Pennzoil and Logano will help Pennzoil launch a new product to those in attendance.
• THE 22 CREW: On February 14th, five different groups of students from the Southeast Career and Technical Academy (SECTA), Culinary Division (Las Vegas), competed for the chance to deliver lunch to the No. 22 Shell-Pennzoil crew members on Friday, March 7th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The winning group will deliver lunch to the crew at 1:30 pm PT at the track as part of the Shell Fuel For Success Program. Visit www.facebook.com/FuelForSucess.com for more info.

LAST WEEKEND, YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING FOR THE WIN LATE IN THE RACE. WILL THE NEW POINTS FORMAT CHANGE HOW YOU RUN?

“Yes and no. I mean, you are going to take more chances at the end of the race. That is what happened with us last weekend. At the end, I thought I would try and stick it in there three-wide and make a pass for the lead. That is what you have to do to try and win one of these things. We lost a spot because of it, but that’s not a big deal. But you aren’t going to try something if you could lose a bunch of spots, because points are still important. A fourth is still better than a 20th. So it will be a case-by-case thing, but I think you will see a lot more of people ‘going for it’ at the end of races.”

WHAT WERE YOUR THOUGHTS OF THE NEW KNOCKOUT QUALIFYING FORMAT LAST WEEKEND?

“I think it was a lot of fun. I mean, like anything else, there are some tweaks that you can make and I think that you will see NASCAR make a few over the next couple of weeks. We need to find a better way to help cool the cars down. If you can get the cars cooled down faster, you will see guys making more runs. But it takes 15 minutes or more to get these cars cooled down, so you really can only make one run unless you are on the bubble and you will try and make a second one. But the format and the idea is great and cool for the fans. Thankfully in Phoenix, we laid down a good lap time early and didn’t have to worry about it. I wouldn’t want to be sitting 11th or 12th with a couple of minutes to go, that’s for sure.”