NASCAR CUP SERIES: WINDOW WORLD 450

July 19, 2026

Joey Logano

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We're joined by our race winner, Joey Logano.

Joey, congratulations on the win. We had Paul in here earlier. He spoke about the up-and-down season you have had. To be at this point in the season, to be able to be here and take home a victory, talk about what that means for the team.

JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, finally, to be able to capitalize on the speed we had here.

It's been a tough year, no doubt. Anytime you kind of lack in speed, you start to question a lot of things around you, what the process is, what we're doing, yourself. All those things come to mind on why there's not speed.

When you come to a track like North Wilkesboro, if we didn't have speed, we'd really be scratching our heads because we feel like this is our best racetrack, a track we've been fast at before. A couple winter tests up here, be able to dial it in a little bit more.

Yeah, I mean, when you have a car that fast, you kind of just make sure you don't screw it up, right? Don't do anything dumb on pit road. Restarts, a little more conservative. Felt good to get our Mustang back up front and lead a lot of laps, win this thing.

We're not in a safe place yet, but definitely a huge points day for us to get on the other side of that cut line.

THE MODERATOR: We'll go to questions.

Q. Your winning streak goes back to 2012. Were you aware of that, thinking about that? Is this something that was in the back of your mind?

JOEY LOGANO: Yeah, it was. I knew it. You start to wonder am I going to have a chance this year to capitalize on one. Atlanta we obviously had a really fast car. We weren't able to get out front.

Today immediately as soon as the race started when I was able to pass a bunch of cars, I got something here. I thought we probably did yesterday, but our car was really loose. We had a lot of speed even though the car was really, really loose. I thought we dial this thing n it should be pretty good.

Again, it's been a while since we've been really good, so you're kind of like, Man, I hope so. I'll be surprised if it's not.

Paul and Joe did a good job of dialing her in so we could get that track position early in the race. I told Coleman when I was driving up here this morning, This is the furthest back I've ever been at this racetrack where we started in 11th. I've never seen that far back here. I'm not exactly sure what to do (smiling). It just goes to show how strong of cars we had in here.

Q. Walt said you've had some candid conversations the last few weeks. What were those conversations about?

JOEY LOGANO: I mean, I think anytime you're struggling, you're going to try to figure out what's going on. Walt is a great leader. One thing, I will always be honest with him, exactly. With anybody. It's the one thing I take a lot of pride in is telling the truth about where things are at and what's going on, where it is.

A lot of the things we talked about is I don't knows, right? Obviously if we knew the answer, we would fix it. There's definitely a lot of challenging conversations, a lot of things looking inward at yourself, figuring out what are we missing, where is it at, what am I doing wrong. Those things are all real.

We're human. We can come here and try to BS everyone about how confident everyone is. Obviously those Mondays after a bad race, you're looking inward first before anything else, as you should. Those are real conversations sometimes with yourself.

You just keep fighting and keep grinding away. It's how I've done it my whole career. You just keep going. Just keep running and eventually you start to see some progress. It just takes a while.

Q. You've made it clear over the years you hate second place and back. Over this past year, I'm assuming it would be difficult, Paul said you're very positive, Walt said you're analytical but positive, was the positivity authentic? How were you able to keep that attitude through all of this especially while you're watching Blaney win the last six races for Ford?

JOEY LOGANO: I guess I'm positive, but I think I'm also a very realistic person. Maybe I can balance those two things pretty well - I guess. I'm pretty realistic about where things are at, where I was at. We're not where we need to be at either, right? Our goal is to win the championship every year. Anytime you're at the point of the season where you're happy with a ninth-place finish, that's not a good place to be.

It's nice to be able to, like I say, get up front here. The job's not done. We still want to win the championship. We got some great tracks coming up ahead of us, so there's definitely a lot of confidence in that. That's definitely real, that we feel like we can capitalize on it. We capitalized on it today.

I think if we keep doing what we did tonight, we can get back into the top 10 in points. It's a ways out, but we can get there if we keep having great runs where we can score stage points in both stages, finish in the top 10. If you could that consistently enough, we'll scratch and claw our way back to where we have a chance to win still.

I don't think 15th is good enough to enter the Playoffs or the Chase, think you have a shot at winning the championship. If we can keep grinding through these next few weeks, maybe we can get ourself a position to maybe we can have a shot at something.

Q. A couple weeks ago somebody in the industry was talking about the Chase standings. They threw out the comment of, If you let Joey hang around, he's lingering around that bubble. You just don't go away. You're in a position to take a Chase spot. Is that what it feels like to you guys, there's always a possibility?

JOEY LOGANO: It's one step at a time. I always said this team doesn't crack under pressure. Like, that's our biggest strength, is that we're an even-keeled team. You just keep going along.

Obviously the pressure's on us right now. This team usually excels in those situations, under pressure. We've seen that for years in the Playoff system we've had for years. It really put us under that crazy amount of pressure for years. Our team's gotten really good at that.

This point of the season where we are, yeah, we're in the crazy amount of pressure territory just to get in. I like that. I like that our team excels in that. I think all of us do. A lot of that's just 'cause of experience that we've been there, done that.

Like I said, the pressure's still on. It's not a comfortable situation. Still it's a long ways from the ultimate goal.

Q. With the exception of the 35 giving you fits a little bit, your strong suit was getting through traffic better than the 11. Seemed like you picked lanes that would open up. Is there an art form to that? Do you read the way it looks, know where to go? Is it luck? Coleman?

JOEY LOGANO: D, all the above. All that goes into the equation of what lane you want to be in.

The biggest thing is just having a car that can be versatile and just go wherever you want it to.

I had that tonight. I had a car that could run the very bottom when nobody else could. In the night it got harder because more cars got in the bottom and got in my lane. I had a car that could go wherever it needed to go.

In a long haul, you're able to pick 'em up and put 'em down. Get out front and manage your tires a little bit. Late in the run, as you caught the lap cars, your advantage over the lap cars was huge where you can just kind of putt right around them.

Getting track position and being able to manage for the long hauls is really the reason why we were able to carve through the field.

The last run was definitely tougher. I ran harder than I wanted to early in the run when Denny was putting the pressure on us. Our weakness was the short run. He got to us. I had to run pretty hard there.

Then it kind of got to where I was in a pretty good spot, tried to save my right rear some. As we got the traffic, especially the 35, I lost my whole lead there. Ran a little too hard getting the tires hot there at the end again.

Definitely the long haul was our strength.

Q. Whatever changes could be coming, is there an expectation that even though y'all's OEM and team package is kind of third on the hierarchy right now, that pendulum could swing as early as getting ready for the Chase? Do you feel there's a chance the advantage could come back your way?

JOEY LOGANO: I mean, it can. A lot of that stuff's hard to say how things are going to go. That's why you just got to stay alive, right? We talked about that a few years with the Playoffs, you just got to stay around or stay in the game. If you can stay in it long enough action this sport goes through cycles all the time, right?

You're down, you're up, you're back down, you're back up. It's a hell of a roller coaster ride being in this sport. It will challenge you in a lot of ways.

If you can just stay in the game long enough, eventually the cycle comes back to you, whatever that is. It's different every time from what I've seen, how you make that difference up.

Yeah, it seems like we're making some progress. Even if he mile-and-a-half's, like Chicagoland, our last run of the race was pretty strong. Not race-winning speed. For where we've been, that was really, really good.

I think we're closing the gap on that stuff. Time will tell on the other things.

Q. Frustration and the doubt you get during a winless streak like that, but when you are in that, how long does your résumé last for you as far as your own self-confidence? At what point in that run does knowing you're a three-time champion, over 30 wins, stop keeping you from starting to think about wondering what you could be doing better? How much is self-confidence and how much is frustration with the equipment?

JOEY LOGANO: I mean, I've never really looked in the rearview mirror much and relied on what you did yesterday to win tomorrow, right? I don't think you can allow yourself as an athlete to do that.

Sure, sometimes it feels good to look at some trophies and say, Yeah, I can do it or I did do it. It doesn't mean that you're going to win tomorrow, right?

You just keep grinding. I can't say I've ever felt like, because of the things I did in the past, it's going to guarantee success in the future. I don't think that's the right way to look at it.

Q. This is a very storied track. Haven't had a points race winner here in 30 years. Talk about being able to be this first winner in a points race in the Cup Series in three decades.

JOEY LOGANO: I mean, it's good. You look around even in here, you see Bobby behind you there. It's a special place. He's not in the room, he's just on the wall holding the trophy (smiling).

Just a special place, right? I remember for years you drive by this place on the highway, you look over, Man, what a crime. To see a racetrack like this with nothing going on...

I remember coming here quite a few years back with Vaughn Gittin Jr. and we had our drift cars here. We were drifting around the track. Gosh, I think it might have been this room. Was this the infield care center?

THE MODERATOR: Yes.

JOEY LOGANO: I walked in here and they had stretchers and stuff in here from years ago. It was a ghost town. They didn't take anything out. Everything was just laying here. Graffiti and stuff. Kind of eerie, to be honest with you. I just looked inside, I ain't going in there.

It's cool to see it come back to life. The fans show up, right? That's the biggest thing. When you renovate a racetrack like this, bring it back from the dead, be able to have everybody show up on a hot, hot day. It's pretty tough for everybody out there today. The place was packed, everyone stayed the whole time.

That's how you keep a race, is when people show up like that. Everyone's doing their part.

Q. Hearing all the fans come to the fence saying your name, putting on an old-school butt-kicking on an old-school track, what did tonight mean to you?

JOEY LOGANO: It was special to win. I don't care where you're at, winning is special. Here is real special.

I went out to do the post-race interview with everybody, everybody is outside of turn three, and there's a lot of really fired up race fans out there that probably are not going to remember tonight anymore (smiling). They are ripping. It was the most energy I've seen. Nobody's leaving. You guys haven't left yet either.

The fans here, they're diehards, right? This is like the old school track. They know you don't have all the amenities of a brand-new stadium-type thing, right? If you like old-school NASCAR racing, this is it. We have a lot of those people.

We need to remember to always cherish those people and understand that they are the backbone of our sport. Coming to a racetrack like this and giving them a race to remember, just the whole experience itself, just bringing this place back, that's huge for them.

You could see it. You could see everybody. Nobody wanted to leave.

THE MODERATOR: Joey, congratulations on that win. Enjoy this win. Best of luck next week.

JOEY LOGANO: Thank you next week.