Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Championship Race Media Availability — Phoenix Raceway
Saturday, November 1, 2025
Joey Logano, driver of the No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse, answered questions from the media before today’s qualifying session.
JOEY LOGANO, No. 22 Shell/Pennzoil Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW DO YOU EVALUATE THIS SEASON FOR YOU PERSONALLY AND THE 22 TEAM? “Obviously not everything we hoped for. Our goal is to win the championship every year and we fell short of that. Our goals are really high. By the same token, I feel like there were moments of the year we looked really strong. There were moments of the year where we didn’t capitalize on opportunities to win that we could have, and then I look at the playoffs as OK. We didn’t really stack any wins in there, but we were able to work our way into the Round of 8 and be a threat up until the last race in Martinsville. I always say the goal every year when we start the playoffs is to make it 10 weeks of hell. Make sure you have the pressure on you for 10 weeks. Well, we got nine – nine hard weeks. That’s better than six, but it’s not exactly where you want to be. In some cases, you can look at it and say we’ve done a decent job, but on the other hand it’s just not what our expectation is of ourselves. This weekend stings a little bit, if I’m being honest. It hurts to be here and not racing for a championship, but, at the same time, it’s probably good that it hurts because it shows you still care. If it makes you a little angry, it’s probably a good thing and you can use that.”
WE’VE HAD FOUR YEARS WITH THIS RACE CAR. WHAT DRIVER HAS BENEFITTED FROM THIS CAR AND WHAT DRIVER HAS BEEN HINDERED BY IT? “Honestly, I think it’s really helped the younger drivers coming into the sport. I’ve got two parts to that. The other car was very unique. It took years to get your head wrapped around it and when the Next Gen car was introduced all of that knowledge that the experienced guys had got wiped away back to zero. If anything, it was even harder because you had to unlearn a lot of things. Now, there’s still the experience and how to lead your team and all those things that you learned for experience that will always be there and will always help you, but you have to relearn how to restart, how to pass cars, how your car is gonna migrate throughout runs, where the lines are. All of those things you have to unlearn, so if there was a time to be a rookie, it was a few years ago. Now, it’s starting to be to the point where everyone is getting experience together and it’s going ahead. The other piece it obviously helped, is when someone like a Shane van Gisbergen is able to jump into a Cup car and win immediately because it felt like home to him, like a similar car to what he raced. He’s really good, so he would have won in the old car too, but I believe it would have taken a little bit longer for him to get his head wrapped around what the old car was as slick as it was to drive and heavy and just little nuances about it.”
HOW DO YOU THINK THE CITY OF PHOENIX AND THE RACEWAY HAS BEEN AS HOST? “I think it’s been great. I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us, we got so used to finishing the year in Miami, where it was just tradition. We were used to it and when that got ripped away, you were kind of like, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna like this.’ I’ll be honest, the first couple of years it felt weird being out here, but it honestly has felt like tradition now out here since we’ve done it for so long. As somebody that’s been fortunate enough to win championship in both places, it’s been awesome both ways. I promise, it’s been great. No matter where it is, I don’t think it’s gonna matter. The place is gonna pack out no matter where it is. It’s the championship race, so as long as it has all of that clout behind it, I don’t think it matters where you put it, the fans are gonna show up, but I will say the fans at the racetrack here have been great. The racetrack itself has done a good job of making it feel special. That’s important. It’s only a big deal if you make it a big deal, and I feel like they’ve done a good job of making this race feel like it’s different than all of the other races because it is and it should be.”
THIS IS PROBABLY THE LAST ONE-RACE VERSION OF THE CHAMPIONSHIP. HOW DO YOU THINK THIS FORMAT WILL BE VIEWED YEARS FROM NOW? “I’m sure some day we’ll be in our rocking chairs talking about this and the argument will continue. I think it will just go forever on which one was the best and all these different ways. I don’t know. I was talking to Richard Petty yesterday and he said he won five championships in five different formats. He’s won seven championships, but five of them were in different formats, and I was like, ‘That’s kind of crazy.’ I didn’t even know that, so there’s a certain point where no one is even gonna know. It’s gonna go to whatever the next one is and if you’re a new fan, you’re not even gonna know what this format was. It’s just gonna be a stat. You just know he has seven championships. I don’t even know the ways he’s won it. He was teaching me things I didn’t know. We might know and everyone is gonna have their opinion on it and that’s fine. I will always remember it personally because it’s affected my life in so many ways good and bad – being on the good side and the bad side. I know I’ve never felt pressure like I do during the playoffs and the way this format is. I’ve never felt anything like it. I’m interested and curious to see what the next one is. I don’t know what it is. Your guess is as good as mine. It’s probably better than mine. You probably know. I don’t, but whatever it is is what it will be and I’m gonna have to figure out how to win in that one, too. That’s just the name of the game.”
WHAT DO YOU DO ON MONDAY? RESET OR GO BACK INTO PREPARING FOR NEXT SEASON? “I’ve got to go to the SEMA show and then the banquet, so Monday is not quite normal, but I will say that I think it’s important to take a second and take a breather. Over these last 10 weeks, like I said, it’s a long 10 weeks and it’s important to take a break – maybe a little time to reflect and not that I haven’t already been thinking about it of, ‘OK, what do we do different next year.’ You’ve got to do something different because what we did wasn’t good enough, so you can’t do the same thing and expect a different outcome. We have to look to do some different things and how can we approach things differently. How do we approach race weekend? What do we have to do to be faster on the racetrack? We just have to try to be better because the bottom line is we were not good enough. That’s the fact. There’s no way to hide from that. You can’t make up all these different scenarios on why you weren’t. We weren’t good enough, so we have to identify those weaknesses and figure out what to do to change those, and that will happen really quickly.”
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE HAMLIN AND BYRON SINCE YOU’VE WON TWO CHAMPIONSHIPS HERE? “I don’t know if I’m the one who should be giving advice. Everybody is different. Everybody handles things differently. Everyone handles the weekend differently. I do always laugh and everyone says it’s just another race weekend and it’s just another race because it’s such a load of crap. It’s not. It’s so much more than that. It’s always funny when I hear that, I will say that, but I don’t know. Like I said, everybody is different, but the pressure is real and everybody is different on their teams, too, whether it’s their crew chief and all that, so everyone’s got to do it their own way. I can’t be somebody else. They can’t be me. You’ve got to figure out your own way of doing it. I don’t know if I can give the best advice, but the only thing I know is it’s the opportunity of doing something that will follow you the rest of your life is tomorrow. That day is that day, will happen and the one thing you don’t want is to go to sleep tomorrow night saying, ‘I didn’t think of this,’ or, ‘I should have thought of this and tried a little bit harder here or put a little bit more effort into this and I might have given myself a better chance.’ That’s my biggest fear.”
HOW DO YOU HOPE TO CONTINUE NASCAR’S RICH LEGACY AS A SPORT? “There are so many different phases of my career, just like anybody else in the sport. There’s the driving and active piece and then there’s gonna be at some point when I don’t drive anymore and what does that look like. I don’t know exactly what that will be, but I do know the definition of a true champion is giving back more than you take and this sport has given me a lot. It’s given me everything. It’s been an awesome experience, and I definitely want to leave it better than it was when I got here. I can do a lot of that now while I’m still active and we do that through the driver advisory council a lot. I’m very active in that, but post racing for me, post driving, I’ll be involved. I’ll be around in some way because the people before me did that for me, and I should do that for the next generation.”
HOW MUCH SLACK OR LACK THEREOF WILL YOU GIVE THE CHAMP 4 DRIVERS IF YOU’RE RACING FOR THE WIN? “I think you’re respectful of the situation. I’ve been in the situation right and your senses are just heightened. Like any little thing that happens you’re like, ‘What is that guy doing?’ You’re just fired up in the car a lot more, so you’re respectful of what’s going on, but you still have your race. You still can go out there and try to win the race. You don’t want to get in the middle of what they’ve got going on and be a storyline, but you can go out there and be a spoiler, if you will, where you can go out there and win the race. It’s happened one time before. Only once, but it’s happened and it’s possible to go beat those guys and win the race. It would be bittersweet, I could tell you that much. It would definitely be that, but it would be cool.”
WOULD A WIN HELP CURE THE SORROW OF LAST WEEK OR FRUSTRATING KNOWING WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN? “I think it would be the most frustrating victory of all time (laughing).”
WHICH LOGANO CHILD IS GOING TO BE THE ONE TO FOLLOW IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS AND GO INTO THE RACING WORLD? “I don’t know if any of them will, to be honest with you. Maybe. I’m not gonna force them, I know that. I’m just gonna let them live their life. They see what dad does and if they want to race, great. I know some good avenues to help. If they want to go do something else, that’s good too. All I want them to do is try hard. That’s all that matters to me is effort. I just want to see them digging and grinding to be great. Whatever it is, try to be the best in the world at it no matter what it is. I don’t know what those would be. I will say that my oldest has taken an interest in just driving. It’s literally every day. We sneak out and go drive go-karts and four-wheelers. It’s every single day, which is great because I feel like I’m raising my best friend, so it’s pretty fun. Whatever they want to do is fine with me. We’ll just wait and see.”
IS HE REALLY COMPETITIVE? “Oh, he’s competitive alright. He’s frustrating to race against, believe me. He’s really light and he wrecks me, but he’s just like his old man (laughing).”
