Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour presented by NASCAR on FOX - Joey Logano Interview after his win at Texas | VICTORY LAP

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

After his first Cup Series win of the season, Joey Logano joins Kevin Harvick for this week’s Victory Lap interview to break down his impressive performance at Texas. The two dive into Logano's thoughts on the win, if he felt he had the fastest car, and his past experiences meeting President Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're going to be lucky sometimes and disliked the other time. If you get in a hole, it's harder to dig out of it. Well, tough luck. I'd rather decide my own destiny. I want to know I can make a difference. The champ is back and that was definitely probably

felt pretty good with the way that everything has gone this year, all the bad luck, good luck, whatever you want to call it. It's been a heck of a year. So it had to feel good to get back to Victory Lane. No, it feels good anytime you go to Victory Lane. But yeah, it's been a an eventful year, it seems like, you have those spans.

You know how it goes. You have those bands in a season where it seems like just whatever you do, something just doesn't line up the way it needs to, and things just kept happening. You know, been on both sides of it, right? Like, I look at the end of the season last year, and the championship run, I'm like, no matter what we do, things went right, you know?

And so now it's just, I feel like we had to pay the price for that. Hopefully now we're through it all, and we can continue moving forward. to get the first one out of the year and get into the playoffs and be able to, you know, now focus on just getting more playoff points. So we go to Texas all the time and it's just this wild race and the cars are edgy and there's crashes and just kind of way out of the norm. Did you feel like you had the fastest car or does it even matter on a day like this? Well, it's always nice to have a fast car and that does matter. you look at all three of those races,

they were pretty eventful. There's a lot of things going on. A lot of crashes, but they were for different reasons, right? The trucks and the Xfinity cars, they wrecked a lot with, you know, cars on the inside of them, right? And getting loose and then crashing up into them. You know, for us, most of the wrecks happen, you know, not all of them, but some of them happened in three and four were the bumps, right?

The bumps with the cup cars, we just can't accept the bump. bumps really well in the back of his cars and you get a little bit high there in three and four and you hit the bump wrong and boom, you're backed into defense. So different reasons for the events, but it does happen. And I do feel like our Mustang was fast. You know, we felt like that in practice that it was capable of going up there and winning the race. But, you know, the penalty you pay from having a bad race previously for going out early and qualifying is a pretty big penalty these days. And so, you know, we went out sixth and qualifying, a pretty poor qualifying effort because of that. And, too, I just didn't do a good enough job.

But both of that adding up as close as the field is today, it puts you all the way back to 27th. And, you know, you not only does it take a long time to get up through the field, but also your pit stall is now really not good. at all, had to deal at traffic the whole time. So it just made the process of getting to the front long and it took a long time to get there. But the fast car definitely helped. I've not been a super big fan of the qualifying order metric. I'm a fan of the random draw to keep, I don't know, it just seems like when you get behind, especially for some of the smaller teams, when they have a good day and can qualify better, it kind of evens things out. Where do you sit on that?

that metric in that regards as far as whether a random draw or the metric would be better. Yeah. Respectfully, I disagree with you. Just because I feel like you earn it, right? Like a random draw is it's a lottery, you know? Like it just, it doesn't, you're going to be lucky sometimes and disliked the other time. At least with a metric, there is a, like you earn the right to have a better qualifying. I'm fine with it.

It's just by points, right? but for the same reasons, if you get in a hole, it's harder to dig out of it. Well, tough luck, right? Like, it is what it is. I'd rather, I'd rather my feet, I'd rather decide my own destiny more than just a random pill draw.

I just don't like living randomly. Like, I want to know I can make a difference. And with the metric, you can, right? And unfortunately, if you have a bad week, it can, you know, go into the next one. But we'd talk out of the hole. Right. Like we were in it, right? We paid the price, but we dug out of it. And, you know, going into the weekend, I was kind of thinking just we just got to get to where we can qualify better in Kansas, right? We just got to have a solid finish. We got to, you know, finish in the top 10 or five and get some momentum rolling.

But, you know, obviously we did better than that. But I personally like that you earn a better opportunity to qualify. Well, see, that's what happens when you sit on the other side of the camera, Joe. You want all this stuff. You want all their stuff. You want all their stuff. up. And I've become slowly thinking outside of the competitor box. So I'm glad that you disagree. I like those conversations. I said respect to you though. No, you don't have, look, hey, this is what this is all about. I love the fact when people disagree with things. And you can, it creates great conversation. We talk about this in the driver council all the time. I mean, it creates good conversation when people look at things from, from different perspectives and can start that conversation. and then it develops into something great.

So I love it. When you look at the way that the Penske group has kind of gotten off to a slow start the last few years. And you guys, you've won two weeks in a row now. You've been in contention. We talk about the 12 car a lot. They've had terrible luck as well. But a lot of times had the fastest car. You look at Josh Berry, had the fastest car.

So I don't know that it's all been performance related this year. what is it about the Penske organization that you guys can solve problems so well to to figure it out eventually whether it's luck performance whatever that is what is it about this whole organization that just seems to be able to solve those problems and move forward i think the the clear answer to me is that we're a process driven organization meaning that when when there is an issue there is a process of figures it out and then we will start a new process of like, okay, how do we make sure this doesn't happen again? So, you know, just racing is there's always, there's so many variables that

you're going to run into the new problem, right? You've never seen that before. How many times have we sat and means we go, gosh, just when you think you've seen it all, you've been doing this for so long, boom, something else new is like, okay, there's a new one we got to handle. And then there's a new process in place. And it's just a very disciplined, this is how we're going to do it and a very engineered nearing process minds there that like look at things from from that standpoint. So I think that's where our advantages. It's just, right? It's just there's no, there's not much emotion. It's just kind of what's the facts? Let's work through it. And you no matter what that is, right? I mean, if you go not to bring up a bad subject here, but like if you go back to

the penalty we had in Talladega, right? How did that happen? And how do we prevent that from happening again? Right? And that was the question, right? The mistake was made. How do we fix it? Move forward. And that's it. Yeah. Well, you got to have a deeper nut and bolt bin. It sounds like going forward to have some fresh bolts and nuts. Yeah. And I think we learned that a few years ago at, or a couple of years ago at SHR, if you don't crash your car, the penalty is the bolts get worn out and it is what it is. But so I'm glad you're on today because I haven't, I haven't seen you. And I know that since you guys went to the White House. And I just, I want to know just how that whole situation was with the president. I mean, I know Paul is now head of security

for President Trump based upon the videos that I saw with his frown and everything that we got to see for hours upon hours. What was that like standing there with the president while he's basically conducting some new tariff rules on the world? Yeah, pretty much just like last time we got to go there back in 2018, there was a plan and then Trump did whatever he wanted to do. I would just change directions so quickly on what we're all doing. But it's an honor, right? I mean, just going to the White House, seeing your race car in front of the White House is the most BA thing that you can ever see. It just looks so cool. And, you know, walking into the Oval Office and meeting the president and just talking to him like he's a normal person, right?

it was cool to see that and be involved in that. Talk about race and talk about, you know, what's going on in our country. And there's a lot of jokes, right? We had fun. We laughed a lot. And then we walked out to the cars. And the plan originally was that, you know,

the president was going to walk around to each car that was there because there was the Indy car there as well, as well as the MSA team because, you know, Justin Newgarden won the Indy 500 and the MSA team won the Rolex 24. So we had all of the Penske, you know, big winners there. And the plan was for him to go to each car and talk to the teams. And then he got to our car and then adjust the media. And then the media just went off on all the things that just happened that day

as he put a pause on the tariffs that day. And it was like, oh, my goodness. And next thing you know, we're standing there for 45 minutes and he's doing his thing. And it was kind of a surreal experience, but pretty fun, memorable for sure. It was memorable. I thought it was awesome to see all you guys standing there like what in the hell is just happening right here. Great exposure for not only the team in the sport, but always pretty cool. Well, you're a champ man. The champ's back. Back in Victory Lane. Congratulations. We appreciate you taking the time today. And hopefully that that bad luck is just gone and you guys can keep rolling. So good luck the rest of the year. Absolutely. Thanks, Kevin. See you, see you, see you know.