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Youth Inc. with Greg Olsen
Building a Champion: Joey Logano on Pressure, Progress, and Motorsport’s Evolution
00:36:56
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, what's going on, everybody? Greg Olson here and we're back for another special interview here on Youth Inc. Last month I had the pleasure of sitting down with three time NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano. We talked about Joey's upbringing in the world of motorsport, how he has developed as a driver throughout his career and what advice he would give parents raising young athletes today. This is a must Listen episode. So sit back, relax and we'll catch you next time right here on YOU think.
- [00:24]
B
Joey Logano, three time NASCAR Cup Series champ. Thank you so much, man. For you to take a couple minutes and talk to us about your journey, kind of how you view sports. We were talking a little before we started on just a little bit of your background. We're going to dive into here in a second, but appreciate you welcoming us to this incredible museum, garage, whatever you want to call it, things. Joey Liano, appreciate you, man. Thanks for being with us here on Youth Inc.
- [00:50]
C
Thank you. Looking forward to having a good conversation and getting. Yeah, this is a shop. So it's a kind of a fun place to hang out and store some cool trophies.
- [00:58]
B
I would venture it's the only, maybe the only place in the world where there's a Model t, a Daytona 500 and a Cheez it trophy all in the same room. So we're checking a lot of boxes.
- [01:12]
C
It sounds about right to me though.
- [01:13]
B
I mean, if anyone else out there, we're going to find that guy and find out who he is. But no. So one of the best things we love about you think and kind of diving into the youth sports experience and the journey, what's very unique here in America, an ever changing landscape. Take us back to your journey. Growing up in Connecticut, right? Born in Connecticut, then you went to Georgia to kind of further your racing career. And just I got to say, I have a young kid growing up back then. Like, how do you venture into the world of racing? Like, just give us. You're not going to the local little league and picking up a baseball bat. Like, what does that look like?
- [01:46]
C
Well, that's the challenging thing about motorsports is because it's hard. Like you said, you can't just go to your local sporting goods store and buy a race car. Like, and it's very complex. On top of that, what kind of car should I get? Well, and then how much air do I put in the tires? What gear do I put in the car? Like all these like little clue, right? And even with my son now, he ran a couple races, I show up to the racetrack And I don't know what to do to the car. I don't race little cars. Like, I gotta kind of. And I even know what to do, so I gotta kind of relearn. But that's the most challenging thing for. For young racers or kids that want to race. And it's a. It's a sport where your parents have to be involved with you to help support you and take you to the track, obviously. But also, the financial impact's big. So for me, I just got a yard cart for Christmas. That's what I got Santa Claus brought one year when I was like, six. Loved it, right? Like, my dad was more of an athlete that can. You know, he played baseball and basketball through high school. Like, I didn't get that gene. And he was in the cars, and he had a trucking company. And so I was naturally just around that. Loved driving my go kart every day. When I got home, they realized that we started racing cars called quarter midgets, which is a kind of like a go kart, but it's got a roll cage and seat belts.
- [03:06]
B
So how old are you at this time when you're actually in these?
- [03:08]
C
Seven. Oh, seven. You know, it's kind of a year later. Yeah.
- [03:11]
B
You're first grade.
- [03:12]
C
Started as a kid.
- [03:12]
B
First, second grade.
- [03:13]
C
Yep. And then. So that was up in Connecticut. Raced those for a while. And then my father sold his company in Connecticut. Just wanted to move south. And so we moved to Georgia for a while, Started racing cars. Bandoleros, legends cars, kind of little bigger cars, getting bigger. And at that point, I was very, very fortunate because my father sold his company, and he committed the next eight, nine years to just going racing with his son. And there's not many people that have the ability to do that. But it was something very special for me and moments I'll cherish forever. But it also progressed my career so fast. Faster than I think any of us are ready for and faster than anyone has in the past. Like, I was breaking barriers coming up as a kid to the point where, like, I was always waiting on my birthday to drive the next car up. And there's a few times we may have fudged the birth certificate to race a little bit sooner.
- [04:15]
B
Secret safe with us.
- [04:15]
C
It lasted for a long time.
- [04:16]
B
No one's gonna watch this.
- [04:17]
C
It didn't last that long, but it lasted for a few races, and it was fun. But that was kind of like we were always pushing a barrier on, just moving up as quick as possible. Because as soon as I started winning in something my parents theory was, well, you're only as good as the people you're racing against. So if you can beat them, you better move up. And so it happened quick for me. Now all the things I did is very normal. Like the pace of how kids today.
- [04:42]
B
You were doing it, your peers of your age all across the country or just where you were living across the country, it's pretty universal. So is it. So take me. Depending on where you live, is there like a geographic component to what the experience experiences like racing and all that. Like if you live in the Northeast versus here in obviously North Carolina, probably more opportunity. Like what does that look like around the country for young kids?
- [05:06]
C
Yeah. So up north the quarter midgets were really big at the time and they still are, you know. And then like the Midwest is more like dirt where they'd run like midgets and sprint cars and those type of things. And even that out west was like that. And then here in the Southeast, I mean there is a variety of cars to drive and a lot of it depends on like what do you want to do. Like if you're a kid that just wants to go racing, like, okay, well there's some racing that's the most cost effective. And my recommendation is when your kid's young, it doesn't really matter like what they're driving, as long as they're behind the wheel, they're learning the basics. Right. But then you gotta decide, okay, do I wanna go open wheel racing, Do I wanna drive indy cars and F1 cars? Like what's the dream? Or do you want to, you know, do you like racing dirt and the dream is to be a sprint car driver or is it to go to the NASCAR route? And any of those can be interchangeable, but you kind of want to race to the type of cars that you're going to be racing if you make it. So that's kind of what we ended up doing. My dream was to be a NASCAR driver and so we staged short track asphalt, big heavy cars. That's what a NASCAR race car is.
- [06:15]
B
So you said something super interesting because I think a lot of families across all different sports, team sports, individual sports, whatever. Stick and ball is that balance between when your kid is young, even if they're good, there's this balance out there right now of saying some families chase it to the ends of the earth. They're on travel teams. It's 12 months a year. We're flying to California and Arizona and Florida. We're seeking out the biggest tournaments we're 8, 9, 10 years old and we're playing national travel, baseball, basketball, volleyball, whatever it is. And then there's other families that say, we don't need that. Right, right. Just get the ball, get the bat in your hand, go down to the local little league and just be an 8, 10 year old and play baseball and it'll all even out at the end. So now you put yourself in your shoes. You are fortunate your dad's able to make this time investment. You're able to go kind of continue to chase this each mark. At what point did you guys continue to chase this and say, we're going to shoot for the moon, and then also take a step back and say, I'm 7, I'm 10? Or did you guys not think that way? Like, I think that's the struggle a lot of families are trying to figure out. Like, when is too much, too much. But here you are sitting here, the best driver in the world. Are you here if you didn't push it that much when you were young?
- [07:25]
C
To answer your question, I think the answer is I would have been. I think I would have been here either way.
- [07:29]
B
Okay.
- [07:30]
C
It might have. The time of when I got here would have been different and who I am today would be different as well. But I think if you win the right races in front of the right people and the opportunities there, it's one thing. But for me, it was. It's a little different because when I first started getting more recognized, it's back in 2005, 2006, and there is driver development programs because finance is one of the hardest things with motorsports.
- [07:59]
B
Yeah. Give people an idea of, like, what that looks like.
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C
So, I mean, if you're racing, like, say you're racing legends cars, right? And you can do that pretty much anywhere around the country. You got 15, 20 grand in a race car and you gotta get a trailer to pull.
- [08:12]
B
And how old are you doing this?
- [08:14]
C
You're anywhere between 9 to 15. Like anywhere in there. You're young and then you gotta get tires, you gotta get tools, you gotta get a trailer. You gotta get a truck to pull the trailer and then you gotta bring it to the racetrack. Then you're gonna wreck it. Then you gotta fix it. All of a sudden you're in this. You're in way over 100 grand.
- [08:31]
B
You think it's about, what is it, 100 grand a year?
- [08:35]
C
How many times are you gonna race?
- [08:35]
B
No, I don't know. Yeah, right. Okay, so it's all relative.
- [08:38]
C
What do you want to do? And what level do you want to do it? Do you want your cars to be nice? Do you want to win? You got to have nice cars, right? Like you can't just like the car matters. The car is half of the battle. So that's where it gets kind of tricky. And so there's lessons learned for the kids, working on the car, building the car, understanding how cars work, like there's all. Those are very valuable lessons because when you do make it, you still have to know all that stuff to help your engineers today. But for going back for me, I got signed up at Joe Gibbs Racing when I was 15 years old. And at that point we never put another nickel into my career. I got started, I got paid when I was 15 to drive race cars. That doesn't happen today at all. Like to this point, like until you get to Cub, people are paying to drive cars all the way through. So to make it you gotta have millions and millions of dollars behind you to get you going. So it's a lot more challenging these days because they used to have these development programs where they're signing up these superstar kids that they think are gonna make it. They sign you up to drive and you wouldn't get paid much, but over time you would start to make it and they recoup their investment. Because you drive for cheap for the first few years and then your career's going. That was a great deal. It's not available anymore.
- [09:55]
B
Those programs don't exist anymore.
- [09:57]
C
The best teams will buy the best drivers, that's what happens.
- [10:00]
B
But they're typically more established. They're not rolling the dice on a 15 year old kid anymore.
- [10:04]
C
They won't.
- [10:04]
B
Doesn't happen. Okay, so now fast forward to this moment in time. The young Joey Logano, growing up in Connecticut or growing up right here in Charlotte, North Carolina, without those programs, without those opportunities, how does their path end up that they're still racing next to you in the Daytona 500?
- [10:24]
C
Yeah, I mean, there's different paths and like I said, it's harder than it was when I did it. So it's hard for me to say what is the correct path now. A lot of it is like the relationships that you build along the way. What you do off the racetrack as a race car driver is almost as important as what you do on the racetrack because you have these sponsors. It's not like other sports where the, the team is sponsored and you're part of the team in there somehow you are, but you're like, you're the face the driver ends up being the face of the, of the car, right? The team and, you know, the driver's the one making the appearances. Like, so you have to be really good at that stuff. You have to be able to build those relationships and somehow convince these, these sponsors that there's going to be a real return on their investment. And it's hard to do that when you haven't made it yet. Like, that's where it gets really challenging. It's easier for us now. Like, for me now, like, we've won some championships, we've proven there's real return on their investment. Okay, we can bring sponsors into the door. But as a rookie coming in, how do you do that? Or even if you're not in the cup level, if you're running trucks or you're running even late models, like, you gotta find some local companies that are willing to invest in your career so you can keep progressing. So the amount of work it takes for a young driver to keep moving up through the ranks and hopefully have some people behind him that are going to, like, buy into what he's doing, it's really, really hard to do.
- [11:54]
B
All right, so you're young, but you're successful, right? You're moving up the ranks fast. There's a lot of success, obviously, but I'm sure there's some failures. And you're maybe racing guys a lot older than you, more mature than you, more experienced, and you're just kind of figuring it out on the fly alongside with your dad and your family and your support system. Take us back to that meant so much about what we talk about with our athletes and with best practices is about you can have all the skillset in the world.
- [12:23]
C
Right?
- [12:23]
B
You were obviously very talented at what you do. You had an innate ability to drive and, and process and all that. But there's also like a mental component to all of this. Handling success, handling failure. But now you're doing it at 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. As a professional, most 14 and 15 year olds are just going to high school, making mistakes. So take us back, like, about the mentality of it. Like, how did you balance success as an early age? Failure at an early age, expectations, like, think back to those years. Like, give us some insight into, like, what that world looked like for you mentally.
- [13:00]
C
So, I mean, at a young age, I don't feel like I don't want this to come across wrong, but I didn't lose much. Like, I would just.
- [13:10]
B
Which helps.
- [13:10]
C
I'd show up and win and we didn't know why. I Just was able to win.
- [13:15]
B
Were the guys you were racing your age or were they older?
- [13:17]
C
They were old.
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B
So when you're 12, 14, they're 20 or older. Oh, you're racing grown men.
- [13:24]
C
Yeah, absolutely.
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B
Okay, got it.
- [13:25]
C
And so. But we could still show up and win. And like, there wasn't failure that's ever happened in my career until I got to the very top, until I got to the cup level. Right. Which is the only.
- [13:39]
B
Which is hard sometimes.
- [13:40]
C
Right. So, like, and that was hard for me. Cause I'd never experienced failure before. So you gotta think, okay, you're a kid that's been racing since you were seven. You win, win, win, win, win, win. You get signed up by Joe Gibbs Racing. Okay, great move up. Get into the Xfinity series, which is one level down from cup win the third race, right off the bat, everything's like, oh, okay, I'm still winning. Then Tony Stewart, who was driving the 20 car at the time, this is when he started Stewart Haas and he said, okay, I'm not going to re sign. I'm going to start my own. My own deal. My plan was to race two years in Xfinity and then move up in the Cup. Well, now I got. At the time it was like five or six races under my belt in Xfinity. And they're like, okay, we want to put you into the 20 car. High profile car. Home Depot's on it. Like, it's won two championships with that team, that crew chief, that leadership model. We're going to put you in. I'm 18 years old. I've never lost before. Sure. Like, I felt like I was going to be fine. I was going to be. It was going to be easy for me. And I failed. I jumped in that thing and I had. The guys that I thought couldn't drive a lick were whooping my ass. Like they were just driving away.
- [14:50]
B
What was the difference? They were just banging.
- [14:53]
C
Well, everybody. Everyone's got the talent, right? When you get to the top, there's. Everybody is amazingly talented. And the amount of experience and the. The work ethic that I had was not there. Right. Because I just showed and go like, I can just show up and win. I didn't have to work at my craft ever before. And so it took a long time. It took first two years of my cup career was pretty weak. Started getting a little better in my third year, but they already started trying to make some changes that they were going to take me out of the car. Wasn't as successful as I needed to Be is it carts expected to win championships. Now I'm four years into my career, I've won two races and not many top fives or anything in between those two races. So it got to the point where, okay, you're out, Joey, don't have a ride for you anymore. And then you're like, wow. So I went through those first four years were the most challenging of my career because I had to work, learn what I learn to lose, for one thing. Learn, learn how to go to work. And I got to the fourth year of my contract and it wasn't good enough. Like, I went to work, I got better and I was seeing progress. It wasn't good enough. And by the grace of God, the 22 car opened up at that point. And that was for Roger Penske, Shell and Pennzoil. And they needed a stable driver. I mean, that's the one thing I always had going for me. I didn't go out there partying. I, I never, like, I was, I was focused. Like, I wasn't doing stupid things. I was going to do anything you asked me to do. I was never going to say no to anybody. So they needed that and I needed a second chance. And I walked into the doors there at Team Penske 12 years ago now and haven't left and was able to really build a team around me and have a second chance. Coming in as a 22 year old instead of being a 15 year old, that's a big difference. Big difference. You learn a lot. So that was, that was the hardest time for me was those first four years of going through that.
- [16:59]
B
Right. But would you say there would be all these trophies and these three Cup Series wins and we can go around this whole room and point out all the major races, the All Star race this year at the iconic speed? Like, do you think you'd have all of that success without that four years of struggle?
- [17:14]
C
It's the most important years of my life. And I didn't realize it at the time because it was awful. But you learned. That's when you learn the most about yourself, is in the trenches. And it doesn't mean that life's easy now. Like now that we've won it a few times.
- [17:29]
B
Expectations.
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C
There's moments where you feel like, gosh, do I even know how to drive anymore? And then you figure it out again and you win a few. I remember that It's a roller coaster. You take them.
- [17:40]
B
We say to the kids on our teams, we coach, the biggest impediment to future success is current success. Yeah, it is the heart. The. If you want to show.
- [17:48]
C
That's a great point.
- [17:49]
B
It's so hard to win once you've shown how to win. Now there's a lot of layers, right? There's the human element of just arrived, I'm complacent, Expectations are higher now. Other people are gunning for you. Right. There's a million reasons why the hardest thing in the world is to have success and then sustained success. And that is so hard. I'm gonna ask you one thing before we move on to some more like higher level things that we love to talk about with our guests, but something that we hear a lot about from, from our fans, from parents, coaches, is like, again, go back to that early experience in whatever the sport is. And there's that boundary between you want to have success so that you develop the love, you develop the growth mindset, you want to continue to work at it. No one wants to do something that they're bad at. No one wants to show up every day to practice and never get the results on the field. But then there's the flip side. And I'm hearing you talk about your early racing days and it start, my light bulb's going off. I'm saying there is an element where too much early success is also a little bit of a hindrance right now. You were racing older guys, you were moving up the ladder. You weren't just racing other your peers. So you were challenging yourself and still finding early success. But just what would you say to families with young athletes, drivers, stick and ball, whatever the sport is like learning those lessons at 12 instead of at 18 to 22, like the story you just told, Would you have been more prepared to handle it at 18, 19 if maybe you did have a little more bumps in the road when you were young?
- [19:24]
C
I've been way tougher. Yeah. Yeah. Because I was very cocky and arrogant when I first showed up because I never lost. I mean, I had every reason to believe it. I'm the best. Like, who's better? Like, I don't get beat. That's what I thought. And I, I wish I had a little bit more failure earlier in my career. But I mean, what. You can't change that. No, but I mean, to answer your question too, about like kids sports these days versus like we talked about how like I was the advanced one doing all this stuff and now all the kids are doing this. Right? Like racing a late model full size car at 12 years old used to be like, are you freaking crazy? Nobody does that now. There's 12 year old kids racing full size cars around the country, like it's normal. And as somebody that went through that, now I look at a 12 year old kid racing a late model, I go and I think it's crazy and I think it's too much like I think it's too soon now. And it probably depends on the kid and it depends on the parent because I think for me my father and I had a blast. And that was the one thing like my dad necessarily. He did so many things right. But the most important thing he always did with me was we made sure we had fun, like we enjoyed it.
- [20:48]
B
Was there a chance for him to win?
- [20:50]
C
There's always. He never said it. He never like chewed me out if I made a mistake. Like he was always supportive, but he's an intense person. And you always, I mean you always want to win for your peers. Right?
- [21:04]
B
Like that's like a natural parent has their different approach.
- [21:07]
C
Yeah.
- [21:07]
B
Some are more subtle, some are a little more outward about it.
- [21:10]
C
Yeah. I mean he did it more like we're doing it together. Like we're kind of like a team. Like it was like a partnership. We're doing it together. You never said that. Right. You're a kid. But looking back at it, that's how we did it. Now I seen lots of kids show up to the racetrack that it's dad's dream. It's not the kid's dream. And it happens in every sport. It's dad's dream. Dad didn't make it, but I want my kid to make it. And they robbed their kid's childhood from it. I loved driving cars. To this day, if I get 10 minutes to kill, I'm jumping on my four wheeler and I'm driving through the woods. I love it. I absolutely love it. If I go to a racetrack to go testing, I'm gonna run more laps than anybody. Cause I freaking love it. And if that's not in you as a child, that you absolutely freaking love it. And it's all you wanna do, don't do it. If you wanna do it, do it with the intentions of learning key lessons that are going to help you in life. If your child does not absolutely eat, breathe, sleep, that sport, make sure it's fun, number one. And make sure they learn some lessons. Right. Because there's so many lessons to be learned in sports. Talk about one of them losing. Right. Learning to lose. These days a lot of kids never experienced it. Right. They're coddled. They gotta learn to take those hits Sometimes I just think there's so many lessons in sports, but you can't take the fun out of it because you're only a kid once. And to me, they're my most cherished memories. But I seen a lot of kids that I grew up with where it was like, not that for them and their dad would be chewing them out after a race and I'd be sitting there like, almost feeling bad for them. Like, after you beat them, like, you're like, shoot. Like, didn't realize that would happen. It just, it's.
- [23:03]
B
It happens in every.
- [23:04]
C
I mean, happens in baseball, it happens in little League. Anything. Like, you just. I hate that is the one thing I hate the most. Like, and my son, now he's my oldest, is 6, and he's kind of showed a little bit of interest in racing, but he's a little bit nervous to go out there and race other cars. But even when we have gone out there, it's weird because we show up and it's Joey Logano's kid. Hudson, not Hudson. Like, I was Tom Logano's son, the garbage man from Connecticut. Right. Like, no one. Like, there was no the expectation.
- [23:38]
B
Expectation.
- [23:39]
A
This interview with Joey Logano is brought to you by our friends at Players Health, a company providing solutions to protect young athletes while playing the sports they love. We sat down with their CEO Tyree Burks to hear how Players Health is making safer environments for athletes.
- [23:55]
D
An incident specifically around emotional, physical, sexual abuse within a youth athlete will change their life forever. I always like to say that at Players Health, our focus is to make sure that the transaction between an athlete and their sports organization, we want it to be positive. It limits the likelihood that something that will change a life forever from happening. We only want sports to be positive. It can't get bigger than that.
- [24:18]
A
For more information on Players Health, visit their website to find out how they can help you. This interview is also brought to you by Max U, a youth sports training program focused on unlocking your child's potential through mindset development. We spoke with the founders of Max U, Dan Greco and Brian Kornfeld, to learn how Max U is empowering young athletes.
- [24:37]
E
How do you swing a baseball bat? How do you catch a football? How do you shoot a basketball? Or swing a tennis racket? Those are skills that are being worked on all the time. But these mental skills can truly matter so much more. So by having a simple, easy to use tool that can get out to the masses, we're just really, really excited about what this could mean for our mission. And what it can mean to honestly change a generation.
- [25:00]
A
To learn more about Max U, Visit Max U Co and use code YOUTH, INC. 24 for $10 off a yearly subscription. Now back to our interview with Joey Logano.
- [25:09]
B
I wasn't going to ask you about it right now, but since you brought it up, how do you plan on handling it if he does stay in that racing world? He's not going to shake it. And that was something. When I talked to Dale on youn think we talked to Dale. I talked to Kyle Busch, whose son's doing it. Obviously, Dale, when he was a kid growing up, expectations are real. Whether it's fair, unfair, justified. There's gonna be people rooting against Hudson. There's gonna be people who love him because they love his dad. You're gonna get everything in between, like, as you start, like, processing that as he gets older. Like, how do you guys anticipate handling that?
- [25:42]
C
I think some of the, like, going back to the lessons, losing when you're young, being very important for you, like, is a balance of confidence versus learning. Learning what life's all about.
- [25:54]
B
No doubt.
- [25:55]
C
And he's already showing up in the limelight. I don't like that in the first place, but there's not much I can do about it. But we're not going to show up with the nicest car. He's going to work on his car. He's going to like, it's going to be an average car. With the few times we have gone and raced, we showed up in the back of a pickup truck. I said, it's a freaking go kart. What do I need? I need something to change the tires. I need a tool bag with, like, a few tools and an air pressure gauge. Like, I don't need much. He's six years old. He can barely hold a thing wide open all around a racetrack. Why do I need all this other stuff? And you see other kids racing there, and they got the logos, tents, they got all the nice gear. No, if he doesn't clean his car, then he's gonna race a dirty car that's on him. Because I want him to learn those lessons. When it doesn't matter. Cause he's six years old, it doesn't matter.
- [26:43]
B
Now's the time.
- [26:44]
C
Now's the time to do it.
- [26:45]
B
17. It's a different animal.
- [26:47]
C
So if. And he doesn't push me a whole bunch to race. He just wants to drive his four wheeler every day out here with dad. Fine with that. Perfect. Six years old, Like, I'm not gonna Push you to do it. If you want to do it. Great. If you want to. He wants to play basketball right now. Cool. I can't help you in that, but I'll be there to help. Like, I'll do whatever I can. I'm not a basketball player. I don't know what to do, but.
- [27:05]
B
So interesting.
- [27:06]
C
But that's fine, I think. Cause I want those lessons to be learned more than anything right now. Cause if he wins a race right now and he's six, you think that's gonna help him make it?
- [27:17]
B
It's irrelevant. In the big picture, it's irrelevant.
- [27:19]
C
Doesn't matter.
- [27:20]
B
We say that all the time now as kids are chasing the baseball world and volleyball and basketball. And I say, I promise you, no college coach is ever gonna walk in and say, can you pull up how many tournaments he won at 12 years old? Show me what team he was on. When you. I promise you, no one's asking what your record was at 12U baseball, 12U volleyball.
- [27:38]
C
It's not worth spending the money yet. It's too young. It's not worth spending the time to do all that. It's worth him learning the lessons right now.
- [27:45]
B
A couple other things before I let you go. Obviously, racing looks like an individual sport. It's the car, the driver. But it is a. I've been in pit row. I've been down to the tracks for the all Star race and the Coca Cola. Like, all the big races. Like, there is a lot of team element to this. Like, all right, I want to be on Joey Logano, top driver, cup series champ, top of the top. The non negotiables for you. You want to be on my team? Whether it's the pit crew or the tire changer or the guy that the jackman, whatever it is. Like, as you put your team together, like, what are those qualities of an individual sport that has to operate in a team setting and in order to build garages of trophies?
- [28:29]
C
Right. And so to answer that, you're gonna take a step back a little bit. Right. So the driver's like the quarterback of the team.
- [28:38]
B
Like, he's the Jackson, the tight end.
- [28:41]
C
Sure. Actually, you're kind of right. I'm just kidding. So, like, it's. And the crew chief is like the coach, and then there's the owner. Like, everybody's gotta make the decisions on who's on the team. But then there's also day to day people that are. That are helping to run all this stuff. And so it's. It's not just on me. I'm just part of the team. I'm a leader of the team. But the number one thing to me is ownership. You gotta, like, take ownership in yourself, in your actions. That's the number one thing. I'd rather somebody, you gotta look inward first before you start pointing fingers. And I'm the same way. That's something that I do all the time. I'm gonna be the one to kick myself before anybody else does. No one's gonna tell me something that I haven't already thought about, about myself, at least. Because you're naturally hard on yourself, or at least I am, no doubt. But I want other people to be the same way. I don't want someone to make excuses, to say, oh, it's because of this or because of that. No. Could you have controlled that? Could you have control that? Like, the number one thing that I can't stand a lot of times is, like, when we go to superspeedways, Daytona, Talladega, you know, a lot of people say it's luck. They say, oh, you just got in the right place at the right time. And it's just lucky. And you just didn't get in the right. No, because there's a lot of decisions made that put you in that spot way before that, might be 40 laps ago, might been in the garage before you even started the weekend that put you in that spot. I don't believe in luck. There's zero luck involved in sports. In my mind, a lot of them are just decisions. And you have to be willing to take ownership and look far enough back on why that happened. And my team does a fantastic job at that. Paul Wolfe, my crew chief, I mean, there ain't nobody that shows a better example of that than Paul, but that's what we are. We're kind of an old school race team from that perspective. And yeah, that, to me, is the number one thing that you gotta have on a race team.
- [30:43]
B
How about the mental approach before the race, during the week? Like, it seems like a sport that requires so much mental toughness, focus. I mean, your brain, you are being stimulated and occupied to your point, making decisions in real time, reaction. Like, is there anything you do, anything throughout the racing world that, you know, drivers do like, the mental side, I think, is such an ignored component to just sports in general.
- [31:11]
C
Yeah. And so much of it. Right.
- [31:13]
B
And to me, it's more important, like, you work on your skills. You're hitting, you're throwing, you're running, you're jumping. But like, very few people work on their mental Approach, routine, focus. Like are there things in the racing world that you do, other guys do, that you feel like have allowed you to separate yourself, prepare yourself?
- [31:31]
C
Yeah, I think the being able to handle pressure is the most important thing. Right. And I look at our race team or myself even like we show up in the playoffs way more than we do all year long. Our regular season, even this year, our regular season wasn't nothing to be happy about, but our playoffs were fantastic. And it's happened like that all three times and other times throughout the year, like it's just high pressure moments is when we show up. It's not an accident that it's like that. Some people are born to love that pressure. Some people have to learn to love the pressure. And it's never comfortable. It's not like you feel comfort in pressure. But for me, I find ways to back myself up against the wall and find a way to dig out of it because that just makes me better. Right. I'm better off going out there and calling my hit before it happens to put that pressure on me because it just makes me work harder and be more prepared and all those type of things. So like for me, I know I'm not the fastest race car driver on the racetrack. I know that I try to be and I try to work on that craft all the time. But I also know where my strengths are. And I think I'm the most mental, tough race car driver on the racetrack. And that's why I think when it's late race restarts or it's racing for a championship in the final four, it's gonna be really hard to beat us because of that. That's our strength. So we play that. And how do I feel more prepared than anyone? Well, one, I've been doing it for a long time, that always helps. But two, I'm gonna out prepare over any other driver. I'm gonna know what's going on. There should be no surprises, in other words, of what's gonna happen in this race. I think I should be fully prepared for it and when I feel fully prepared, it comes natural after that. Like the pressure, the stress that you feel comes down a lot and you can focus in way better. It's just all about the prep. It's all about the little crap that you don't think matters and you may never see in the race, but at least there's not gonna be a surprise when it does happen.
- [33:42]
B
Alright, last question. So all that being said, you win the 24 cup series, great playoff run, give me one example, give me one critical moment, why you were at your best when it mattered, and that was all the difference. Is there one thing off the top of your head, a decision? You mentioned late start, you know, late race, restart. Like, is there anything that comes to mind that's like a great kind of bow to tie around, like everything you just laid out, preparation both before the race during mental toughness, adversity. Is there like one thing that pops into mind? It's like this is all of it playing out in a real moment.
- [34:20]
C
Yeah, I guess it's so hard to say is one because it takes so much to get to it and there's so many people that lead up to it, but you're asking me personally. The final restart of the championship race in Phoenix, 50 something laps to go, we restarted fifth. And before you get to a restart, you get to choose what lane you're in. So you have to study which lane is the best lane to be in, but also where's your competitors. And the way it lined up is the 24. Byron, he was the leader, he picked the bottom, but he had two of his teammates right there. And so the five and the nine were on the two outside lanes. And then there's a 20 in front of me and then me fifth. And so I thought, shoot, 24 is in a really good place here. The teammates are going to kind of let them up. They're not racing for a championship. He should be fine. The pressure got to him. He missed turn one, went up the racetrack, let the 20 get underneath him. All I did is stay calm through this situation. Right now, the 20 is up next to him. The 20 makes a mistake racing for the lead and slides up the racetrack, it just opens the door for me. So, like, the point was the whole time is I was fully prepared for what could happen, and I stayed calm and they didn't and opened up the door for us to take the championship. And it came down to two mistakes on those guys. And we were able to be perfect through that restart. And then holding off my teammate Blaney, who ran me down at the end of the race, but able to hold him off, it was. It was intense and awesome, but it all just happened because of the prep. That was really all that happened.
- [35:50]
B
Well, dude, I can't tell you, man, to be able to pick the brain of high performers, people that are used to operating in critical moments, intense moments, and, and not just have periodic success. I agree with you about the element of luck. Like, there is nothing lucky about people that can repeat success. Over and over and over extended periods of time against the best in the world, against people that's only job is to unseat you and to get next year's trophy. So to like again in a world that I don't pretend to know, but I believe all these practices, whether it's racing football business, these practices of high achievers, all the principles align. They're all the same. It's just how you apply it to whatever field you're in. So for you to kind of share this mindset, share your backstory and your history of why you are who you are and have had the success I think is going to be very, very appealing and interesting to our, to our viewers on you think man. So appreciate you taking a couple minutes to share your story.
- [36:49]
C
Absolutely great capitalist when somebody's done even more than me. So I appreciate, thank you.
- [36:55]
B
But appreciate you, man. This was awesome.