Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Interview with Joey Logano and Roger Penske

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

NASCAR legend Kevin Harvick sits down with defending champion Joey Logano and Team Penske owner Roger Penske for an exclusive conversation ahead of the 2025 season. They discuss the keys to Penske’s continued success, Logano’s mindset as he looks to defend his title, and what’s ahead for the team in the new season. Don’t miss this in-depth look at one of NASCAR’s powerhouse organizations! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I feel like I'm a talented driver. Am I the fastest driver on a racetrack? I don't believe I am. Am I one of the smartest race car drivers on the racetrack? I believe I'm that. That's how I beat everybody. This is unique to have both of you. Is this the first time that you guys have actually done an official interview together?

I think it is. It is. I've ever done something like this. I'm not sure what's going to happen, so it'll be interesting. Well, that's okay. I think for me, this is quite an honor to be able to have both of you sitting here together, because I find this pairing to be pretty interesting in how it started and how it's evolved. And now you're sitting here as a three-time Cup Series champion.

That has to be far from the expectations that you had when you started in 2013 at Penske. So how do you summarize that in everything that you've gone through from where you went from Gibbs to your relationship at Penske, and now you sit here with three champions? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's remarkable just to think about what we've been able to accomplish together. If I think of my career before Team Penske and where I'm now, it's completely different. But, you know, the star is aligned at the perfect time. God plays the right people in the right place at the right time for me. And it's really worked out.

And, you know, when I think about when I was at Gibbs, the performance just wasn't there, right? For many reasons, right? A lot on me, a lot on the team. just wasn't gel, wasn't working. But when this opportunity, you know, came up, it needed some stability, right? They went through a couple different drivers and, you know, Shell was looking for somebody that was, you know, stable, as well as Roger and Team Penske, and we were able to go out there and start slowly gaining some success on the racetrack as well.

You know, the first year I was there was right after they won the championship with Brad. So it's kind of nice to be able to kind of follow along the two car and Paul and Brad. And myself and Todd were trying to, you know, pick up on it and try to keep up with them. And then a couple of years after that, the success really started to come in where we can win five, six races a year and be threats for championships. And that's really a big difference there. What have you seen from Joey from the time that he started until now? Because I, look, Joey and I have had some great moments that are entertaining for the fans. But we've also become what I would categorize as friends, right?

And speak a lot about our sport and just the maturity of our lives have changed. But internally, from your point of view, how has Joey Lugano changed from where he started to three-time champion today? Well, I think it's ironic that Brad Kuzlowski was the one that came to me and said, look, we should get Ligano to run with us. Obviously, that was an authorization, you might say, or a good reference from the standpoint where Brad saw him. And he came on board, and it was interesting because I had to wait in order to hire him because Joe Gibbs said, look, I'm going to maybe get him a cup right where you wait a week. Well, I waited a week with my fingers crossed, hopefully that he'd be available. But he's come on board, and I think as we grew the company and grew the team, there was no question.

And I think he had one goal, and that was really to be a leader. And I can talk about wins, but when you think about the consistency, and we became good partners, I think that was the key thing. And we do that in the company today. And this moment we sit here with three championships, and I think 34, 35 wins, Joey's a leader of the team. You could see it the other night in the duels behind Cendrick. I mean, he could have gone and pushed out or pushed in,

But I think that he gets it. He understands if we're running three cars. Only one can win. But if the team wins, he wins. And I think that's the most important thing. And what I've seen him is really work well with our sponsors. And you know, Shell, from your experience with them, they're a terrific sponsor. And they've been with us.

And I think he's been a real asset for them and for us. So as I see him at the beginning, he was a good race driver. He's matured through that time. But now he's a leader at the day. team. What wasn't working at Gibbs when you, you were so young at that particular time. What do you think was the one thing you say, there's probably not one thing, a couple things that you say, okay, I was young, I needed to do this, and then you go to Penske and you want to change what? Because the reason I say that, when I went from RCR to SHR, I was, I had this

just I had this, this stigma around me that was, you can't work with this guy, you can't do this, you can't do that. And when I went to, when I went to SHR, Rodney sat me down and he said, look, we're here to race. We're here to win. We don't need you jumping over cars. We don't need a story. We need the story to be about winning. So what was that change that fit the Penske culture that you felt like you had to change in your life or career? Yeah. I mean, I think for For me, if you look back, when I started at Gibbs, I'm 15 years old. Tough. You're 15 years old.

What do you know? Right. And you grow up in this environment in the limelight. At that point in my career, to be honest, I never lost. Like, I just jumped in cars in one. And I didn't have to work at it. It was just a natural talent was enough to carry me along. And there was a lot of hype.

And I believe the hype, which was the worst thing for me at the time. but now looking back at it is actually great. But I had to go through those years of struggle. I had to get to the Cup Series and struggle. I had to go through there and learn my lessons the hard way. I had to do it in front of everybody, unfortunately. That's part of- The world we live in.

Part of doing it. And I had to learn also what I needed in a race team to be successful. I had to learn myself, for one, how do I be a successful race car driver? But what do I need for people around me? And you don't know that until you go through. it and you work with different people, you start to learn what works, what doesn't work. And like I said, unfortunately, it just didn't work. It got to the point where we had to break ties, but when I had the opportunity to walk into the doors of Team Penske,

that was my opportunity to do it all the second time. And like anybody else, when you do something the second time, you're going to do better. You have all those thoughts in your mind of, I need to treat people this way, I need to look at, approach races this way, I need to approach controversy, this way, I have an idea of all the mistakes that I've made. I know how to do it better now. And I had a fresh start. Is that a conversation that you guys had? When you started, was there say, hey, this is the Penske way?

I wouldn't say that. I think there's more hype on that. We're a race team. You know, we want excellence. We want teamwork. We want everyone working together. And to me, we're not the team. I think Joey saw this where everybody has their own crew chief

and they do their car their own way. We build our cars to say, you don't know which car is going where when we build until we put the decals on it. And that made a big difference. And I think he saw that when he came in, that we were committed to everybody on the team. And then as he matured, and we matured too,

we got better. And you've seen that over the last decade now. It's been a big time for us from the standpoint of results. And I think that Joey fit in. And I look at it this way. He came in the door, as Rick Mears did, and some of the other people have been with us their whole career.

And I said to him, look, this is your home now. You come in here and you perform. We've got sponsors. And remember, you've got the inside people you've got to sell. And we've got to also sell the outside people, which are sponsors. And he took that on and has done a terrific job. And that's probably helped you too, because I look at you now, and I look at you from the business side of things.

and I'm like, what in the world? I mean, this guy is full on business outside of the car. How has, for me it was Richard Childers. He was very good. He would introduce me to everybody. This is what you need to do from the business side, because there's a business and a political side to this if you want to be good at it.

Like you can't just get in and drive the car and be one of the greats. You've got to understand the whole ecosystem and how this works. How has he helped you with that side of things? By leading by example. Right, and that's what I was going to go with just a culture as well of a company. There's never a moment where, like, Roger sat down with me and said, hey, you dress a certain way,

you look a certain way, you act a certain way, you just know because that's what everyone else does. And you look at it and you say, okay, who's your leader? Roger Penske's our leader. He does it all this way. That's what this is set up to be. And so you just kind of blend in. If you want to win, you join winners and you watch what they do. And there's not many times that I've ever seen this man lose in anything.

Not lately for sure. And because of that, right? But because of that, you start to watch, it trickles all the way down. Yeah. Right? All the way through each level throughout our business or our race team, it's just there. It's just the way it things go. And so over the years you learned that all those little details matter.

Right. The little things that are just, you may think, are nothing, right? like we said, dressing a certain way or acting a certain way that may not, how does that make your race car go faster? It does. It does. You just don't realize that those little things that stack up. And like I said, a great leader doesn't have to tell you that stuff.

You just see it. When you look at last year and you look at the first, let's just call it half of the year, it was not good from a performance standpoint. From the outside looking in, you're obviously the leader of helping direct the traffic on what's wrong, analyzing a car. And I talk to people all the time. They're like, wow, well, they fix it. I said, no, it's not that easy to fix a problem. There's a difference between guys that can win races and guys that can win races and solve problems.

And to me, last year, there were some problems solving that had to go on. And that direction comes from the driver's seat to the engineers and the crew chiefs and the information just builds. And it's like, all right, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to go here and we're going to fix this problem. And it evolved into a championship year. When did you, when do you think that Joey helped become the leader from the driver's side of it? Because you had this interesting time period where you had Joey and Brad. And it seemed like there was this time when you really came in and started. to help with that role of guiding the performance side of things when there was a problem,

or you were running good to get better. When do you think that it was? I think it's pretty easy. You know, when Brad left, Joey came to me, said, I want to be the leader of this team. Wow. And he's done that from the very beginning, and I think as he and Ryan became closer and understood the goals, certainly with Cendrick and our relationships with the Woodbrothers, All of this is tied together, but I think the common thread through all of this is the stability of our race team. Because you walk in the door, we've got a chart there. Some 200 and some people have been with the team over 10 years, some 20 years. So that continuity and that domain knowledge has made a difference.

And we were not as bad as we looked. We got wrecked. I mean, look at that wreck that he had in Richmond, you know, two corners to go. And there was a lot of heat there at the end. end. He still won five races. You know, he won the clash. So at the end of the day, I think that at that point he took off. And to me, on the other hand, he still has the confident, but also he has the respect of what Blaney's doing and what Cendrick's doing now. And I think, you know, early on, maybe the question, what's this young guy here? You know, I was a young

guy. I'm not going to put my arms around you, but I think they sit down today and they talk about what they really understand because the cars are the same and I think our engineering people got better and quite honestly we were lost a little bit with a new car but once we understood and we did some testing and I think the big probably the biggest thing when you was it North Wilkesboro he went to North Wilkesburg and ran hundreds of laps there yeah and we did a lot of testing there and that gave us a direction and that direction has been you know obviously it's been gangbusters for us and the results

show for themselves. I think our team does a great job at, and Roger already kind of said this, but we all work together so well, not only on the racetrack, but what we do off the racetrack, where if all the cars are built the same and drivers are saying different things,

we need to talk that out and hash that out and understand what that means, so we can push, if all three of us can push the company in the same direction, and it's not one driver is saying this, One driver is saying this, the other driver's saying that, and the other one's saying something different, it just confuses everybody.

If the drivers can align and then give more clear advice to what we think we need in our race cars, and the engineers and the mechanics and everybody really can start working on that right direction. And I'm not taking credit for doing all that, right? We have great leaders of Michael Nelson and Travis Geisler that help corral the crew chiefs as well as the drivers and the engineers to make sure that we're steering the ship together, right?

We're going up and down together all the way through it. So I think that's a big piece of it. There's a real knack to being able to understanding that you're a piece of the equation and understanding you're a piece of the equation and helping those guys direct it. And it was very evident last year. I think as I walk around, listen, meetings, committees, do you realize that you're one of the leaders in this sport from the driver's side now? How is that?

I do now. I mean, that has to make you feel good. Yeah. That evolution has to be pretty rewarding. Yeah, but it's kind of like at the right time. Right. I remember, I've always gone to the meetings. I've always like, if you invite me to go something, I'm going to go and listen.

I'm not going to speak up unless I feel confident in the way I feel, whether it's a race, you know, a NASCAR meeting where we're going the direction of a sport or our race team meeting or whatever it may be. And for years, I just listened in those meetings, right? I let you talk, right? I let the guys that have been around a long time that understood the sport better than me, because I had to learn. I had to learn the whole ecosystem on how this works because we all need to win together, right?

Whether it's the team owners, if it's NASCAR, if it's the drivers, the sponsors, the TV partners, everybody's got to win together. And that's one thing that's helped me just, just kind of over the years, being in those meetings and listening to other people's perspectives on what makes it all work. It's way more complex than I thought it was when I first started. So I think that's really helped me understand, right? Whether it's an interview at the end of a race and you're frustrated and you just want to go home, it's part of the, it's part of the job to do that stuff. It's important for a sport to do that stuff. I just think it's

very important whether it's when I leave this sport to be able to leave it better than it was when I got here. Somebody did that for me beforehand, right? And it's the same thing with Team Penske, right? Roger and the other drivers and other leaders of that company have built this incredible mega race team that we see today. Right? Like I take that responsibility very seriously that if I'm that guy now that's helping lead

this whole thing, I'm. I want to make sure that it's as good or better than it was when I first got there, because that's what happened before me. Has there ever been a moment that you remember that you had to sit him down and say, all right, we need to do whatever better or you're in trouble today. Is that a phone call from Roger Pinsky, or is that a, hey, I'm coming to see you or you need to come see me? How does that work?

I would say, Kevin, I can't remember when I had to make a call. call like that or put my arm around him in the room. What I have told him, I said, we're going to have bad days. And when you get out of the car, I would say, hey, Jimmy Johnson gets out of the car, and it's a bad day. He's positive. And I think that's one thing that you always learned. It does us no good to be an expert, you know, after the race. We've had a bad day. And I think that, I think he's just grown in the sport. I always say when he puts that helmet on, he's a different guy, there's no question about it in the way he races. Look, you and he had many times on the racetrack, but I think the, yeah, loved it. It made everybody better. But the respect. Yeah.

On the other hand, look, he wants to win, and you could just see it last year when we got down to the championship there and to have both of our guys again, you know, racing each other. And we got there, the guys worked on the cars and we try to make our cars better. And I think it's, we, we, we, evolve these cars every single race. It's little things. And think about it. We bring people up. We fill the funnel from the bottom, not at the top. You know, Jonathan Hassler, you look at that. You know, Paul's been with us, started in Infinity. You know, Miles now is over with the Woods brothers, and you've got the whole team has grown that way. And I think we, I think the most important is respect within the team and acknowledge the success. And you know, I look at Ryan and what

he's been able to build. I remember when he walked in our trailer at 17, 18 years old and look at him now, 10 years later. I mean, he's a real player. But these guys respect each other and their crew chiefs are working together. And I give a lot of credit to Geisler and certainly Mike Nelson and the rest of the team. And you don't see the people inside that, work every day. They're the unsung heroes really that make a difference. And I think that Joey's been a great catalyst to keep that together. So what's next?

Is there anything that he has that you'd like to drive or race? I love NASCAR racing. I know you love NASCAR racing, but is there anything at some point, Joey, you're going to have to burst outside of this bubble and you're going to have to try something that's fun.

You're going to have to step out fun. This is fun. This is fun. It's fun. It's fun. But I mean, no indie car test or anything like that. Nothing intrigues. This guy races all around the world. Everything. Roger Pinsky has everything that you could possibly race.

I would like to try other things sometimes. I love driving NASCAR. I love driving stock cars. This is my dream since I was six years old, right? When I turned on the TV and watched, you know, all the greats in the 90s, I was like, man, this is what I want to do. That's never wavered for me. Yeah.

Now I will say as I'm obviously exposed a lot more to IndyCar. Would I like to drive one? Absolutely. I like to drive one. Do I want to race one? Not necessarily. I'd like to see you drive it. I'd like to see if I can do it. I'd love to see that.

Or the sports car stuff. Like that stuff's cool. There's no doubt it's cool. But, you know, I'm specialized in one thing, right? I'm very specialized in stock car racing. I feel like I'm a talented driver. Am I the fastest driver on a racetrack? I don't believe I am.

Am I one of the smartest race car drivers on the race? track, I believe on that. That's how I beat everybody. And I need to be able to focus really hard and work hard to gain that advantage or make up that little bit of speed that I need to be quicker. I need to work on to do that. And I think if I try to take any effort away from that to do something else, Joseph. He's going to have a little bit of fun every once in a while. It's just, we're talking one day. Kevin, the only thing that's fun to me is winning. Okay? That's all I want to do. You can't win anything in January, so maybe we'll take you to Florida. I mean had a little fun doing that. We'll take you to Florida and let you drive.

So a couple of last questions. So typically we ask people at the end of our interviews, what was your first car? Do you remember that you bought? It was an MGTC, 1950. Yeah. Before you were born. Yes. Well before I was born.

Yes. And the other part is you have so many different experiences. What was your favorite race car that you ever drove? Well, I guess the favorite race car that I drove was Tell Our Special. It was a car that was a Formula One car that had been wrecked up at Watkins Glen. And then we had the engine out of Jack Brabham's car that he ran at Indy. And we put it together and put a body on it. We blew everybody off.

And as usual, they made us change the car. So to me, that was the best car because I raced with Moss and Gurney and those guys back in those days at Riverside and Laguna, which you know the West Coast stuff. But I would say that car was amazing. And driving the chaparral too, you know, with the automatic transmission with Shelby complaining that GM was in the racing business was another one that was terrific.

And I guess I have to say the Pontiac, you know, that I drove, you know, for what was it, a year it was, but Ray Nichols. And Goldsmith was driving. And remember, Foyt was in that race. ended up winning. I let it and then had a gearbox go out. But those are things that it's so long ago. But it built a base for me. And then I got out because I wanted to become a business guy who had a Chevrolet dealership. And I needed to get insurance. I needed to borrow money from a bank.

And you couldn't do that unless you were not a race driver. So I made it pivot there. And then shortly after that when we started our team, but I came from an experience of racing. And the early days, I remember we had sponsors $250 in SCCA. You couldn't put them on the car, so I put tape on it and let it blow off by the second lap. Always got the marketing mind. I could tell you, we had a lot of fun. But I think the NASCAR, and you talk about Joey and what else you can do, but these guys can try these cars.

But when you race 38 weekends, I don't know how you keep yourself up physically and really mentally. Sometimes you're running when you're hurt, too, and these guys never stop. And I think Joey is a perfect example of that day in and day out. And I take my, we talked about it today, you know, coming down on the plane about how every single weekend, one weekend maybe in the next several months, they have time off. And that's everybody. You know, this is just not the driver. So it's a full-time commitment for you, your family, and obviously commercially for your sponsors. I think one of the neatest parts about Team Penske, and it's something we don't talk about enough,

is listening to Roger talked about the history of our company, is I don't know if our race fans, especially the newer race fans, know what Team Penske is about, right? There's no doubt in my mind that it's the most decorated race team in America, right? When it comes to the amount of years have been racing, all the different types of forms of motorsports, the stories that come along with that. I love the stories. There's a heritage center that we have. And it's absolutely incredible to walk through.

The blueprints of the old Indy cars, it's the old trophies, the helmets, the fire suits of the drivers, all the different drivers that have driven for them. I always remember the 50th anniversary of Team Penske and all the drivers were there. And I was like, gosh, it's like, unbelievable. And it's so awesome to be a part of that, right?

To just have a little piece and say that you've won a race for Team Penske like some of these amazing race car drivers are. And when we went to Darlington, we had the Mark Donahue throwback car. That's a pioneer of Team Penske as far as the driver's side. And that's just really cool to be a part of that and get to show that and keep that tradition going for years into the future. Well, it's fun to watch what you guys have built. I appreciate you guys taking the time today. Thank you.

I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you.