August 9, 2015- That is the last time that Joey Logano found victory lane on a road course. Logano took home the win after Kevin Harvick ran out of fuel.
Logano will have four chances in the next nine races to change that stat, with the Cup Series venturing to a stretch of road courses including this weekend on the streets of Chicago.
Logano shared his thoughts on the upcoming road course stretch.
“We’ve got to do them, so I’m kind of good either way. I just think in the playoffs you need to have a good mixture of racetracks throughout the 10 weeks, but the other regular season races, I mean, if we’re gonna do them, then I don’t really care. Whatever works best for the schedule and weather and fans and that type of stuff is fine with me,” said Logano.
Logano does have a favorite part of the Chicago Street Course, he just hasn’t been there, yet.
“It’s probably Victory Lane, I just haven’t seen it yet (laughing). Up to this moment, it’s been the ride home. Hopefully, it’s not like that this time. This track is very challenging in its own way. When you look at turns one and six, you have no run off, so there aren’t many street courses that I know of at least, where you have long straightaways with literally no run off, so the risk is huge here. When you go to push it, you send it in there a little bit too far, and we’ve seen that where a car goes straight right into the tire barrier. You don’t have the ability to make mistakes and just turn around and get back going again. It’s a little different than other road courses, where a lot of times you’ll maybe overdrive the car to find the limits in practice and stuff like that. You can’t afford to do that here.”
One of the most notorious and treacherous part of the course is Turn 10 by the fountain.
“It’s sketch. You’re kind of booking around the waterfall there and then you’re switching directions and you’re going down that little chute. It’s two lanes wide and surprisingly when you watch these races back, people make passes through there, which is wild because it’s so tight. You feel like you’re going really fast, but you’re really not. It’s such a tight area that you feel like you’re booking it and the car, again, is bouncing all over the place. That’s another part of the track, too, when it rained and if it does again, that part of the track doesn’t dry very well.”
Just as in the past two Chicago street races, rain looks to be in the forecast for Sunday’s Grant Park 165. Logano talked about racing in the rain, and how it has evolved over the years since the inception of rain tires.
“You know at least what you’re getting into. Comfortable? Never. I don’t think so, but since the first time here, I mean, you look at all the rain races that we’ve had and the one that stands out the most to probably everyone is the one at COTA that was like, ‘OK, that’s too far.’ Now we’ve gotten to the point where we can go out there and make laps and race. We know what the right amount of spray is so we can see and feel safe out there, and you can tell the drivers have all gotten much better at it. The first time we were rain racing we were all tip toeing around and everyone was going wicked slow. It was like, ‘What are we doing?’ Now it’s like, instead of survival is what it was to start, like just don’t crash, now they feel better about it. They’re more comfortable. They’re more aggressive. They’re out there racing now all the way through the field. You used to see maybe the top 10 cars really racing each other and feeling comfortable enough to get after it, and everyone else was like, ‘if I just don’t crash here, I’m gonna finish in the top 10.’ Now, that’s not good enough anymore.”
Tune into coverage of the Grant Park 165 on Sunday beginning at 12 Noon on WVJS presented by Floor Concepts.